Chapter 13

Liberty, at Last…

It took Oliver about twenty minutes to walk the half-mile between his apartment and the hunting supply store where Jake Rakowski worked.

Behind the counter stood a blond woman with long pigtails. The name tag pinned to her chest identified her as Ashley. Oliver approached the counter and, though her beauty unsettled him, he reminded himself how superior a renowned photographer was to a simple, unlettered, philistine of a saleswoman. That thought bolstered him enough to gather the courage to speak to her.

‘Hi, how are you,’ Oliver said and tried his best to suppress his fury caused by the woman’s indifference toward him. Could he blame her? He looked uglier than a horse’s ass. But still, she could have shown at least a bit of interest in him. He could be a potential customer! ‘I, uh, I’m looking for a guy. Jake Rakowski. Can you tell me where I could find him? I know he works here.’

She looked Oliver straight in the eye and shook her head with a frown. ‘You the police? I already told you everything I knew!’

There was something in her irritated expression that he craved. He wanted her then and there. ‘No, no. I’m a civilian, you might say.’

‘Well, haven’t you heard then?’

‘Heard what exactly?’

‘Jake was murdered,’ Ashley said and shrugged. ‘No one knows exactly what happened, but the police found his body somewhere in the river. Here, take a look.’ She reached for a newspaper and tossed it on the counter.

Oliver recognized the man in the photo instantly. It was the same man he had seen at the party, and he was wearing the same jacket with that white star. Oliver asked himself whether the guy ever wore anything other than that stinking jacket.

‘You mind if I take this with me?’ Oliver asked, tapping the gray sheaf of newsprint dangling from his grip.

‘Go ahead. I’ve read it, like, a hundred times already. Learned the whole damn text by heart.’

The photographer smiled as he folded the newspaper; he didn’t give a shit about her mnemonic capabilities.

Her blue eyes lowered and focused back on her phone. ‘So, is there anything else I can do for you?’

He thought of at least five things she could do for him but just said, ‘No, that’d be all. Thank you for your cooperation.’

Ashley snapped her head up. ‘But you said–’

‘Just kidding…’

Oliver went out of the store and trudged through the thick snow to wherever his legs would take him.

Jake’s dead, and it was Carlos who found me dying on the floor…

Oliver put two and two together and figured, though he had no idea how, that Carlos must have killed Jake and disposed of the body while he’d been on his way to the hospital. That would also explain why his apartment was so clean (apart from the stinky food, that was). He must have bled like a slaughtered pig after being beaten and stabbed, yet there was not one trace left of anything having happened on that cursed night.

...this is the car for the perfect crime! Oliver remembered Carlos saying when they’d first met. He must’ve taken care of literally everything!

He walked on, unable to wrap his head around all that had happened lately. By the skin of his teeth, he’d survived an almost fatal assault, his lover had left him for a dead guy, and on top of it all, a man he barely knew had saved his life and eliminated the potential future threat once and for all. Oliver felt lucky, but at the same time he was so unaccustomed to such favorable treatment that he asked himself whether Carlos was in reality a guardian angel, or whether this was all just a pleasant dream? But the pain was too perceptible for it all to be a dream, and Carlos was all too corporeal to be considered a supernatural spirit.

Oliver was stupefied; he had to sit down somewhere and let it all sink in. To sit down was also a good idea for another reason – he had been walking around the district for about an hour and a half by now, and he felt so exhausted he was barely able to catch his breath. He entered Grand Park and bent over, ever so slowly, to use his forearm to clear the accumulated snow from one of the benches. It was still before noon and the park was nearly empty; maybe two or three people were crossing it, using it as a shortcut to get to a building on the other side. No wonder. The snow was coming down heavily now, covering the thick layer that had accumulated during the night before. He opened the newspaper on the page that talked about Jake’s death. The precipitation made it difficult to read the article, and the paper would soon be useless as it got soaked. But on the other hand, Oliver didn’t intend to keep it with him forever, so he decided to give it a try and read it anyway. The article said:

The Dillon Police Department made a gruesome discovery Thursday morning after discovering the body of a young man in the Maddox River. Police said they responded around 7:45 a.m. to reports of an unconscious and unresponsive man in the water.

The victim, identified as 28-year-old Jacob Rakowski, was pronounced dead at the scene.

So it was true. His adversary was dead. Never again would he have to worry about his physical or psychological well-being. That was good, Oliver decided; a life devoid of the stress and worries associated with losing it was definitely helpful for his recovery process, which – and of that he was more than sure – would not be quick. Not at this age and with his health.

Oliver supported himself on his knees to get up from the bench. So strenuous was this effort that he thought his stitched wounds were going to burst open. This sensation passed once he straightened his back, but he could still feel the blade of the knife penetrating his torso when he walked the short distance to the trash can to throw the soaked newspaper away.

He then turned around and headed toward the street to hail a cab home, but in the middle of the park, after just a few steps, he came to a sudden halt when his whole body froze like the icebound waters of the Maddox River. Oliver caught sight of a man standing at the other end of the park who was looking skyward while talking on the phone. Despite the freezing cold, the man wore only a simple T-shirt. Oh, how he wished he had such excellent health, to stand outside like that, talking without being affected by the frigid weather! But the conversation was not what worried the middle-aged photographer. The source of his great dismay was the fact that the man’s face looked exactly like his!

Oliver decided to see it up close. He wanted to take a step forward, to assert dominion over the familiar machinery of bone and sinew, but his leg refused all entreaty. It was as if every single part of his body had suddenly deserted him. He couldn’t breathe. He felt an agonizing cramp in his jaw, and his chest hurt even more than when he’d been kicked by his young assailant. Every motion he attempted was now a relic from the distant past for the injured photographer. All he could now do was to accept his role as the impotent spectator of his own physical demise. And just like a statue no longer important to history’s course that has no control over being toppled by the storm of dissent, Oliver Morneau fell facedown into the thick snow without anyone’s noticing him for the next half an hour.

Covered in the deep winter shroud, he died alone.

THE END

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Chapter 12

Ciao, Bella

The ceiling lights must have gone dead hours ago. Only a shy yellow glow struggled to illuminate the room from somewhere in the corner. There was almost no sound coming from behind the door save for the usual static – the distant hums and beeps that defined the immediate silence.

Oliver was the only person in the room, or at least the only one lying in bed. There was another person sitting next to him. The mustache was unmistakable.

‘Carlos, it’s you,’ Oliver whispered. He tried to clear his throat but the sharp pain in his lower chest interrupted his attempt and soon spread through his entire body.

‘Calm, calm,’ Carlos said. He got up and filled a white plastic cup with water, which he brought to Oliver’s dry lips. ‘Sim, senhor, it’s me. Take a little sip. But slowly!’

Oliver did as he was told. The cold liquid flowed down his esophagus, and after an instant he felt it cool the inner walls of his stomach.

Most of Morneau’s body, especially his legs, felt numb and heavy. He had the uncanny conviction that his temples were being firmly held by the jaws of an invisible vise. He put his right hand between his head and the lumpy pillow. The left arm had been fitted with an IV, resting at his side. He faced the square-shaped window to his right and fixed his eyes on the thickly falling wet snow.

Without taking his eyes off the window, he sighed and said quietly, ‘Will you look at all the snow? The weather’s fucking disgusting.’ A pause. He didn’t look at Carlos when he asked, ‘How long have I been here?’

‘It’s been a week now, senhor,’ Carlos answered in a gentle yet solemn voice.

‘A week, huh?’ Oliver echoed. A smirk appeared on his bruised face. ‘And how the hell did I get here?’

Carlos said, ‘It’s a long story, and I don’t want to tire you. You’ve just woken up and–’

Oliver faced his guest immediately and through gritted teeth, said, ‘Please. Tell me, Carlos.’

Carlos looked him in the eye for a few long seconds before he asked, ‘You don’t remember anything?’

The truth was that he remembered very little of what had happened that night. ‘Well, I was setting the table for dinner. I was listening to some music. And Mariella was late.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘Stupid little Mariella…always late.’

Crossing his arms, Carlos inhaled deeply. ‘Senhor, shortly after we last met, I encountered an old friend of mine with whom I studied medicine back in Brazil. He works in a hospital in Auburn Heights and told me he would make sure that all my documents were validated and that I get a job at the same hospital he works in. The Dillon Community Hospital, that is.’

A slight frown formed on Oliver face. Nevertheless, he nodded slowly, saying, ‘Congratulations, Carlos. I’m glad you can finally get back to your line of work.’

‘Thank you,’ Carlos said and gave Oliver a brisk nod. ‘So, because I was so sure that I’d soon start working in that hospital, I wanted to give you back your generous tip. The one you’d given me after I drove you home. I remembered where I had let you out and I took the liberty to enter your apartment. There I… I, well, I saw you lying bleeding on the floor and I, uh…’ He leaned in, their foreheads almost touching, and whispered, ‘I took care of everything, senhor. You won’t have to worry anymore. About anything.’

The future doctor nodded and gave Oliver a reassuring look, which the patient didn’t fully understand. Oliver figured that it must have been a cultural thing, so he decided to play it nice, to be polite, and nod back.

Carlos sat upright again while Morneau asked, ‘Did you talk to the doctors about me? What did they say?’

‘You got beaten up pretty badly, I must admit,’ Carlos answered. ‘Not only did you suffer minor fractures of your left ribs, but you were also stabbed in the abdomen. Nothing too serious, though. The blade passed between the organs. Add to that a small brain hemorrhage, and the doctor decided that it would be best to put you into a medically induced coma to give your brain the rest it needed to recover and heal. I couldn’t agree more with the doctor’s decision.’

‘I see,’ Oliver said and lowered his gaze. ‘Thank you, Carlos. You saved my life. I will be forever grateful to you.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Carlos said and waved his hand. He got up and gave the patient another sip of water. ‘I have to go now, senhor. I’m glad to see you’re doing better. I will tell the nurse to check on you.’

‘Words can’t describe how thankful I am, Carlos. Please accept my endless gratitude,’ Oliver said after having put his hand on his sensitive chest.

Carlos offered him a smile. ‘Just do me a favor – get well soon, okay?’ he said and finally left the room.

The nurse entered the room about a minute later and checked all the machinery to which Oliver Morneau was connected. After deciding that everything was in order, she told him that he’d see the doctor tomorrow morning and that he would most likely be discharged after the visit, too.

Once alone again, he fell asleep, hoping that this time his state of dormancy would last only seven hours, and not seven days.

The following day, once the last injured area had been taken care of by the nurse, Oliver Morneau was free to go home. His doctor told him basically the same thing Carlos had and added that he should come back in a week to check whether everything was healing well.

He got out of the intensive care unit almost unable to walk, but after a few minutes regained total control of his legs. He needed them to get out of the hospital; under no circumstances did he want to appear vulnerable, necessitous, or be associated with sick and dying people. In the meantime, Dillon had gotten so cold, Oliver thought he was going to sneeze ice cubes. It was as if the whole planet had contracted from the cold and squeezed the city right up to the North Pole. Carlos had been nice enough to bring Oliver some clothes from his apartment. Hadn’t it been for that act of kindness, Oliver figured he’d have had to walk barefoot for about two miles in the thick snow.

As grateful as Oliver was for everything Carlos had done for him, he was in no shape to call him and wait in the freezing cold before he arrived with his cab; for all he knew, Carlos could have been in Redwood or Grand Quills, if he still drove one at all. That was why he hailed the first taxi he saw in the oncoming traffic.

Back home, Morneau was doing reasonably well. Granted, he still felt the stab wound as if the knife had been there the whole time – which made him walk much more slowly than he used to and in a hunched position – but what mattered to him was that he could walk and function mostly on his own.

As soon as she had noticed that her upstairs neighbor had finally come back, Mrs. Sullivan went up to see how he was doing. He was thoughtless enough to open the door, forgetting that she was one of those people who would go on babbling for a whole day if not interrupted. All he said was that he was fine, but didn’t want to push his luck, and so he was going to rest a bit. That intensely nasal voice of hers would have killed him sooner than his wounds and bruises would.

Oliver closed the door and went straight to the kitchen, where he remembered leaving his phone. The place reeked. All the food on the table had already been completely covered with mold. As he grabbed the phone, he attempted to recall what had led to his being in this aching and tender physical state but there was nothing. His memories were like a film that suddenly ended, leaving only a black screen waiting for the credits to roll. The battery was dead, too. He went to his bedroom, where he kept his charger, and plugged the phone into the wall. That would normally take not more than a few seconds, but in his current state, Oliver had to be careful about every single movement. One bad move and the excruciating pain would leave him breathless and paralyzed, as it were. That he wanted to avoid at all costs, for if there was one thing he hated more than himself, it was pain. He was convinced that it was better to die than to feel pain. Once dead, he pondered, you don’t care about anything anymore; it’s like going to sleep for all eternity. But pain? Pain was a nasty son of a bitch that let you live and see all the joys of life while reminding you that you won’t be able to enjoy them ever again.

After taking care of the phone’s battery, he trudged toward the bathroom, where he wanted to analyze his state in peace and quiet. In his apartment, he could have all the time in the world, unlike the hospital, where every minute someone entered the room to give him another injection, another pill to swallow, another paper to sign. He winced when he saw his battered face; he looked at least ten years older. His brows were swollen and half of his right eye was red. His left eye looked clean, but had a puffy dark purple bag under it. His lips were so cracked that it would take another week of applying lip balm before they healed. He had no idea when he’d be ready to shave either.

Oliver hung his head after realizing what a mess he was. How he wished he could look healthier and younger again! What a wonderful thing it would be to look like that young clerk at that hunting store. The one with the strong chin and the long hair and…

His eyes widened suddenly.

The white star on the jacket. He could see it clearly now. It had been that clerk, the guy he’d met at the party, who had done this to him! What was his name, James? Blake? Mariella would know for sure!

Oblivious to the pain, he bolted out of the bathroom and went straight – as fast as he could, anyway – to his bedroom to get the phone. He unplugged it from the charger and turned it on. Before he ever got the chance to touch the green icon on the home screen, he received a list of notifications informing him that Mariella was trying to reach him. Fifteen calls in one week. He promptly returned her call and didn’t have to wait long before she picked up the phone.

‘Oliver,’ she greeted him.

To his surprise, her tone of voice wasn’t all too urgent but, if anything, lackadaisical.

‘Mariella,’ he said. ‘Yes, uh, I saw you wanted to talk to me.’

‘I called you, like, a hundred times or thereabouts. What happened to you? What’s going on?’

A smirk appeared on his ruined face. ‘Funny you should ask that.’

A pause.

‘What do you mean, Oliver?’ Mariella asked.

‘Could you remind me of your ex’s name?’

‘Jake,’ she shot back. ‘Why?’

Oliver sighed. ‘Can you tell me why you were late for our dinner?’

‘Look, Oliver, I intended to arrive as planned, but Jake showed up at my apartment and asked me about my plans. I told him I was supposed to see you later that day for dinner. When he heard that, he freaked out. He snatched my phone, took my keys, and locked me inside my own apartment! Can you believe that shit? I didn’t want to, like, scream from the top of the building for help either, you know. They’d probably think I was nuts or something, so I waited until he’d come back, only he never did. My roommate came home a bit later, so when I was finally able to get out, I took a ride and went straight to your apartment, but the place was swarmed with paramedics. I asked them what was going on, but they said they couldn’t tell me anything because I wasn’t related to you.’

So close, Oliver thought.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, Jake sent me to the hospital that night. He beat me up, and pretty badly at that.’

Mariella was silent for a couple of seconds. ‘I can’t believe he actually did that. Are you okay, though?’

‘I’m getting there,’ Oliver answered with an accompanying smile on his face. ‘I must admit, it felt pretty good to see that you called me so many times. You must have been worried to death, huh?’

‘Well, yeah,’ she said. ‘That and one other thing…’

‘What?’ The expression on his face became as solemn as Mariella’s voice.

‘Dammit…’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Look, I know it kinda sucks to say it over the phone, but…’

Oliver knew Mariella was having difficulties telling him something, but he wasn’t going to interrupt her. He felt that if he gave her a bit more time, she would be able to tell him everything she needed to get off her chest. So he waited.

‘I don’t think we can see each other anymore,’ she finally announced.

Morneau’s jaw was hanging wide open. ‘What, what do you mean? Mariella? Why do you say that?’

‘Look, I was feeling kind of funny the last few days, and since I’m a, you know, sexually active person, I decided that it would be best to take a pregnancy test. And it came out positive.’

Oliver didn’t know what to say, but what he heard next was like receiving another thrust with a knife, only this time to his heart.

‘And since you’re a bit, you know, old, I’m pretty sure that you’re not the father, Oliver. I will have to move in with Jake once I find out where the hell he is, and that means that, well, as I said, I won’t be able to see you anymore. So…’

I knew she was fucking someone else!

He didn’t want to prolong this agonizing awkwardness any second longer. He said, ‘Yeah, I understand, uh–’

‘I knew you would,’ she said. ‘Thanks for all the photo shoots, though! Oh, and don’t forget to call me whenever somebody is interested in working with me. Like, an agent, right?’

Oliver wasn’t conscious of what he was saying anymore. ‘Yeah, sure. Will do.’

‘’Kay, gotta go. Bye!’

He lowered the hand holding his phone and stared at his bed. The very bed where he’d fucked that ungrateful slut so many times. He tried to make a star out of her, and that was how she repaid him? And just like that, she went to that snot-nosed bastard, whose baby was forming in her screwed-up uterus. And who said the baby was Jake’s in the first place? Maybe he was still fertile, after all. He knew of tons of men who were in their sixties or eighties and were still able to sire sons and daughters. And just who the fuck gave that lousy bitch the right to call him old, too? And how could she leave him? Him, who tried to help her, in exchange for a guy who had not only proven many times to be abusive toward her, but had now also beaten her photographer almost to a fucking pulp? He considered himself lucky he still had all of his teeth, but he would still have to double-check on that.

No, he would not take it anymore! Gone were the days when the world could spit in Oliver Morneau’s face and laugh about it! He threw the phone onto the bed, turned around ever so slowly, and headed towards the door. In pain or not, he was on his way to Sabertooth.

END OF CHAPTER 12

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Chapter 11

The Idolater

Despite her vague and dubious assurance, Mariella did show up at Oliver’s apartment at about half past eight in the morning. She greeted, or rather rudely awakened, her lover with a short yet powerful scream as she saw him lying unconscious with his head on the bed and his legs on the floor. A purple bump bulged above his left brow. The ashes on his head made him look as though he’d been resting like this for millennia and was only now waking from his primeval slumber. She rushed to shake him but soon realized that it wasn’t necessary since her alarming reaction had already revived him.

Oliver’s eyes were wide open now. He didn’t recognize Mariella at first, but when he remembered what day it was, he immediately realized that he was scheduled for a photo shoot with her. As if there were any other women in his life, he thought and hated himself for being so short on options. He was sure that, in his case, the supply of ass was non-existent due to the unfavorable aesthetics of his decrepit physiognomy.

‘Oliver? What happened here?’ Mariella asked, still leaning in to inspect the mess on his forehead. ‘What is that on your head?’

Oliver moaned when he touched the area affected by the ashtray’s blow. He rubbed his dirty hand against his pants and said, ‘Ah shit. It’s, uh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry.’

‘Oh-kay?’ Mariella said, after which she straightened up again and inspected the dirt under one of her fingernails.

He got up ever so slowly. All the joints in his body were creaking like old floorboards. Merciless friction. Bone grinding bone.

‘Anyway,’ he said as his brows lifted above his lazy eyes. ‘You’re ready?’

‘Oliver, I just came here.’

‘Right. So! Let us go to the living room, if you please. You must have seen that everything’s been set up already.’

‘Yeah, it looked pretty neat. Let’s hope the results will be the same,’ Mariella said, holding up her crossed fingers.

While Mariella was changing her clothes, Oliver went into the bathroom to clean up his face. He then went to his bedroom one last time to get his camera. On that day he used his trusted DSLR. He chose it for its fast shutter response and phase-detection autofocus, which locked onto a subject almost instantly. That was good because he didn’t have the patience to stand there like an idiot, trying to adjust the focus manually as though he had to plead with the small machine.

Mariella was dressed in a black blouse that exposed her milk-white neck right down to the pale hollow between her breasts. It looked as if the upper part of her body was meticulously cut off from the rest and pasted onto the black backdrop. Oliver was delighted by the result; she could have easily been one of Gregory Raff’s models. And as he looked at her like that, remembering all the dismembered women, an idea formed in his mind.

‘Wait just a second, love,’ he said and rushed to the corridor. He took one of his black coats, strode into the living room, threw the coat at her, and said, ‘Take off the blouse.’

‘Why? What am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll help you out.’

Mariella was naked from her waist upward now. Oliver put the coat around her waist, then drew the wide black sleeves thereof over her arms and tied them behind her back. He asked his lover and model to support herself on one leg and let her body tilt to the side.

‘Now you’re the Venus de Milo.’

‘I’m what?’ Mariella asked. There was a tangible disquiet in her voice.

‘The perpetual symbol of beauty.’

A faint smile appeared on her smooth and delicate face.

‘Perfect,’ Oliver said. His heart was aflame with desire for her. He was grateful he wasn’t in need of cock stiffeners to put her hot body to practical use.

‘You think?’

‘Look, I don’t want to jinx it,’ he said and bit his lower lip for a second, ‘but this could be the one that will launch your career, baby.’

‘Shut up – are you serious?’ she squealed, stamping her feet on the floor.

‘Uh-huh. I think I’ll use this one for my exhibition.’

‘You gotta be kidding me!’ she said. ‘You’d do that?’

‘Of course,’ he said in a calm, almost sage voice. ‘It’ll probably be the highlight of the night.’ Of course he would use one or two of these pictures at his exhibition and try to promote Mariella a bit. In the end, Oliver believed, sex was never free. Never. There was always a price for putting one’s dick into a woman’s vagina: money, children, alimony, STDs, or a picture at one of his exhibitions, for that matter.

After an hour and almost a hundred and fifty photos, Oliver said, ‘That’ll do for today. Why don’t you make yourself at home.’

While Oliver was checking the photos on the camera display and transferring them to his laptop, Mariella got changed and went to the kitchen to make them some coffee. When she came back, she pulled a bagel from her bag and started munching away. It was her first meal that day. She had skipped breakfast at her place on purpose. She didn’t want her belly to appear bloated during the photo shoot.

‘Have you heard?’ Mariella asked after swallowing the penultimate bite of her cinnamon raisin bagel.

‘Heard what now?’ asked Oliver in an indifferent tone without taking his eyes off his laptop’s screen.

‘Someone was murdered not far away from where we were partying? On Saturday?’

‘Really?’ he said, still absorbed in the screen and clicking away.

‘Yeah.’ She took a careful sip of her steaming coffee. ‘Someone stabbed a homeless guy, like, a couple a blocks away,’ she said and imitated the movement that defined the crime, pretending what was left of her food to be the attacker’s knife before consuming it. ‘Just think how close to death we could have been!’ she said with her mouth full, crossed her arms, and rubbed her left arm with her right hand. ‘The thought alone that I could’ve been the victim gives me the heebie-jeebies…’

‘There was no one there,’ Oliver muttered.

‘Huh?’ Mariella uttered and craned her neck forward.

Oliver turned quickly away from the laptop to face his young lover. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘You said something, I didn’t hear you.’

The photographer pursed his lips and waved his hand dismissively. ‘I just wanted to say there were probably no witnesses. I mean, if somebody had seen the crime happening, they definitely would have reported it. Like, right away. Or tried to prevent it, right? So the killer’s pretty lucky,’ he said and turned back to the laptop.

Mariella looked at the floor, raised her brows, and said, ‘Lucky? Yeah, I guess…’

What followed was sex. There was no sigh that would part from Mariella’s lips, nor a cry that would break the air between them.

Oliver, heroically spent, sank beside her as though he’d found both triumph and defeat in the strenuous act.

On her way out, Oliver summoned the courage to ask Mariella whether she’d agree to have dinner later that same day. Much to his surprise, she was glad to accept the invitation, and they agreed to meet at seven.

The dinner was to take place in his apartment, and that meant he had some shopping to do. He took a shower, dressed in his best clothes, applied the most expensive cologne he had, and went out to the nearest supermarket, which was located near the jewelry store where he’d bought the engagement ring for Mariella. This time it was much earlier in the day and there were many more people walking the streets. This made him feel safer.

While heading to the supermarket, Oliver didn’t even notice he was walking in a bike lane until a cyclist told him to make way and that he was not supposed to walk there. Oliver was more than tempted to stop the man on the bike and kick his means of transportation so that he would fall to the ground with it, maybe break a bone or two, but then he remembered how many times he had had to talk to the police during the last several days and decided to turn a blind eye to the cyclist’s insolence. He certainly did not need the heat right now.

Even though the supermarket was crowded, Oliver found everything he needed to prepare the dinner fairly quickly and went straight to the checkout. When everything had been paid for and packed, the cashier, a young woman who looked like she was at her very first job, wished Oliver a nice day in a sweet nasal accent. A hushed silence descended on the customers waiting in line behind Oliver. The chatter became much less lively and the people were staring at the bald man with the red-rimmed glasses who suddenly turned to stone.

Should I really accept a “nice day” from such a snot-nosed vagrant? he contemplated. As if I needed anything from her. Like I couldn’t have a nice day by myself if it weren’t given to me by her! But then, she’s so young and her face is exceptionally pretty. Even prettier than that of Mariella. Maybe… Ah, fuck it.

The conversations behind him died out completely as people noticed Oliver’s awkward, prolonged immobility. He was aware he’d become a spectacle to them, the protagonist of a freak show. He refused to be that. He picked up the plastic bags filled with his groceries and strode wordlessly out of the store.

Once back home, Oliver pulled the groceries out of the bags, placing them on the kitchen counter, and started preparing dinner when all of a sudden his phone rang in the pocket of his pants. Unknown number again. He was so close to tapping the red button, but then remembered how he didn’t want to be pushed around anymore. The one and only Oliver Monreau would not be intimidated by anyone!

‘Yes?’ Oliver said and pressed his lips together.

He heard his own voice again. ‘Now you’ve done it, old man! Now you’re totally fucked. You hear me, you old prick?’

Oliver’s heart quickened, but that did not hinder him from continuing the conversation. ‘What is this about?’

‘Don’t act like you don’t know.’

Morneau felt the blood rush to his neck. ‘Listen to me, palooka. I don’t know who you are and what kind of funny business this is, but you better shut it down, or I swear on my mother’s grave, I will find you and snuff you in the fucking throat!’

There was short, fitful laughter on the other side. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really,’ Oliver answered promptly.

‘We’ll see about that, old man,’ his voice announced faintly, and the line went dead.

He put his phone on the counter and looked at it with quivering lips. He was surprised to notice that his hands were shaking as well. How could that be? Why was he afraid? He was inside his home, his castle, within the very own walls he’d known so well for so many years, and now somebody was trying to threaten him in it? To invade and play with his sanity? No, they had no right. He refused to acknowledge the paralyzing fear lingering deep inside his guts, ready to take total control over him. He shook his head briskly, took the knife into his right hand, and continued preparing the food. He almost cut his fingers.

It was about half past six when Oliver finished cooking. He didn’t intend to waste any more time and was quick to set the table for them. On each plate, he put cooked potatoes and beans with melted herb butter spooned over them. He set a plate at each end of the table. In the middle of it, however, lay a metal tray holding roast chicken with lemon, sage, and parsley stuffing. He then took down the black backdrop from the living room wall, furled it, and tossed it under his bedroom window; there was no time to deal with it now, for he still had to change his clothes, and it was almost seven already.

After having taken a quick shower, Oliver put on a white shirt, a pair of tailored black pants, and sprayed some of his favorite cologne on his wrists and neck. He checked his watch and winced.

‘She’s fuckin’ late,’ he muttered under his breath, and went straight to the living room where he intended to listen to some music while waiting for his hopefully future fiancée.

He turned on the sound system that still had the Franz Liszt CD inside. The track that came out of the speakers was Totentanz. He rested in one of the armchairs and tried to let the music relax him, but Mariella’s tardiness didn’t necessarily make it easy for him to do so.

Who does that insolent bitch think she is? he asked himself, his legs bouncing to the rhythm of the music, only twice as fast. Making me wait for her like this. I want to propose to her, make her my wife so that she can tell everyone she meets: “I am Oliver Morneau’s wife! I am a wife, and not just a vagabond whore!” But no, she has to make me wait! Her egregious behavior douses the flame of my feelings for her, undoing the magic. Bitch… She’s lucky I’m even interested in her. If it wasn’t for me, she’d rot away in that bar, or worse – on the street. Who would hire her as a waitress once she turns thirty or forty? That girl has no future without me!

If he had to be completely honest with himself, Oliver hated everyone. With a passion. That’s what everything boiled down to at the end of the day – hatred. Hatred for all. One and all. But the dangerous thing about it was that it wasn’t a feeling that accompanied him throughout his life at a constant level. No, it grew and grew like a balloon until it would most probably explode one day from the excess of air. And so Oliver also needed his release. He had made a decision – if she said “no”, this would be the apogee of his hatred toward humanity; of this he was sure. And then it became clear to him: it didn’t matter whether he desired her or not. There was something much bigger at stake here – his dignity that, for the first time, he was ready to defend.

Oliver’s bitter rumination was interrupted by a brisk rap on the door. He took a deep breath and got up from the chair. He wasn’t able to hide the smile that formed beneath his beard while he walked to the front door.

The knocking turned into downright hammering.

‘Easy there, I’m coming!’ Oliver said and stretched his arm to reach for the knob.

He couldn’t wait to see Mariella all dolled up, but the very second he unlocked and opened the door, his own face appeared from the other side, looking at him through the narrow crack between the door and the frame.

Oliver froze. He could clearly see his face, but it looked different. It was younger and much more rigid, a far cry from the floppy jowls he was used to seeing every day in the mirror.

‘Did I miss the party?’ his doppelganger said with a malignant smile stretching from ear to ear.

‘What the–’ Oliver said, but couldn’t finish. He was thrown backward as the door was kicked open. It seemed to him that a battering ram had been used to carry out the invasion.

Oliver saw himself approaching him with the muscular arms outstretched. They stuck out of a green military jacket that had a white star sewn on the chest. He knew it very well, but before he could say anything, his double lifted him by the collar of his shirt and, holding firmly unto him, threw the photographer against the wall.

‘You thought you could fuck her and get away with it? Did you?’ Oliver’s counterpart said and punched him in the left cheek.

Oliver’s glasses went flying toward the bathroom door. His body collapsed. The only thing he was aware of was the blood spilling from his mouth, pooling on the floor inches from his face.

Morneau had nothing left to fight with. He remembered that the knife he had used to cut the ingredients for the dinner was still on the kitchen counter, so he decided to make a run for the weapon. But the only thing he managed was to crawl a few inches into the dining room that preceded the cooking area.

‘Well, what have we got here? A fucking candlelight dinner!’ Morneau’s double said. The following silence made him kick Oliver in the ribs with his combat boots.

A faint moan was all that escaped the battered photographer as he heard a loud crack. Morneau found himself unable to breathe easily. Each time he inhaled, he felt a sharp pain that hindered him from talking or coughing. He felt stunned.

‘Did you seriously think you could escape me? Escape my wrath?’ the doppelganger yelled, droplets of saliva hanging from his chin. He then quickly knelt above Oliver and started to belabor him with his fists. ‘I told that bitch to change her plans, but she wouldn’t! Fucking! Listen!’ The last three punches were the strongest; they emphasized each of the last three words he uttered.

Oliver’s face was now a mess of bruises and blood. His eyelids were so swollen that he could barely see what was happening in front of him.

The attacker wiped his blood-covered hands against Oliver’s white shirt, stood up, and started prowling through the dining room and the kitchen. ‘Look at you, all fucking weak and whining,’ he said and snorted. ‘You pissed yourself, too.’

The merciless bruiser cut himself a piece of chicken and ate it while walking around the table.

‘I wonder what she sees in you, you know? What is it that you have and I don’t?’ he said with a full mouth and entered the kitchen. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong – of course the girl’s one asinine dumbbell, anyone can tell you that. But to go so far as to fuck you? Shit, I can’t let that happen, man. Especially considering that she chose you over me.’

The doppelganger surveyed the kitchen and noticed the knife resting on the counter. He grabbed its handle immediately.

‘Oh, so that’s what you’ve crawled here for, huh?’ He approached Oliver, squatted, and drove the blade effortlessly into Oliver’s abdomen. ‘There you go, shithead. See you in hell.’ He then got up, stepped over Oliver, and headed toward the doorway.

The sharp pain was the last thing Oliver’s body could endure. He only heard faint thuds echoing from the corridor before he embraced the soothing softness of the absolute, velvet darkness.

END OF CHAPTER 11

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Chapter 10

An Abeyant Day

The next morning, Oliver woke up abruptly from a nightmare. He dreamed he was back in school. He was standing at the front of the classroom between the students’ desks and the blackboard, on which his teacher, Mrs. Mullican, had hung about twenty of his photos, principally those that had received the best reviews and awards so far. As he looked at the students sitting at their desks, he perceived some new faces among them. Not new to him, but new to this particular place, anyway. There was his mother, Susan Hamming, and her forward friends, Joe King, Lynette Marson together with her late daughter – Darla – and her bedridden auntie. John Kinzel, Mariella Purington, Jake Rakowski, and that slick son of a bitch Gregory Raff. The cops and his neighbors were somewhere in the back, too. All of their faces bore slight frowns, squinted eyes, and malignant smiles, as if they anticipated a catalyst that would allow them all to deride and ridicule the solitary photographer in their midst.

Mrs. Mullican stood up, extended her hand toward the pictures, and said, ‘This, my dear students, is essentially Oliver’s lifetime achievement.’

All of them started to howl in laughter, beating their desks with their fists and stomping the ground with their feet. Even tears were flowing down their cheeks. Most of the students, together with the new guests, had trouble catching the smallest breath.

Oliver’s wrinkled face contracted as though it meant to force every tear back when all of a sudden the door swung open and in came his father, Henry Morneau, a tall, powerfully built man in a checkered shirt that looked ready to burst around his massive biceps and hair-covered chest, broad as a continent. Everyone fell silent upon Henry’s entering the classroom. He looked around and turned to the blackboard to inspect the pictures.

In a voice not quite local, Henry asked his old son, ‘What are those?’

Oliver replied, ‘Those are some of the photographs I took, Dad. Do you like them?’

His eyes scrunched up ever so slightly. ‘They’re yours?’ he inquired as if to make double sure, his index finger pointing alternately at the photos and Oliver.

‘Yes, Dad, they are. What do you think of them?’

Henry turned to face Oliver, looked him deep in the eye, and said, ‘Well, I think they fucking suck!’

This last sentence, and especially the last word, his father uttered with such a deafening shout in his face that it made Oliver’s eyes snap open. He wondered for a moment where he was. The first thing he saw was a small cellar spider dangling from a single strand of silk attached to the snow-white ceiling, slowly lowering itself toward the floor.

As he beheld the small animal, Oliver took a deep breath and before releasing it, thought, I’ve been given another day. I must not wither away.

In his attempt to get up, Oliver noticed that this simple task wasn’t so simple after all, for he wasn’t lying in his bed but on the hard, dusty wooden floor. His lower back had never felt so rigid in his whole life. Getting on his feet was a challenge he wasn’t sure he could overcome that quickly. He supported himself on his right elbow and, as he looked at the floor, remembered that just last night he’d seen those traces of charcoal leading him to that strange creature lurking in his kitchen. There was only one problem – the floor, not counting the thick film of dust, was impeccably clean! But how could that be? He rose to his feet as quickly as his aching back allowed and trudged slowly to the kitchen.

Again, nothing.

He sat down on the same chair Erica had occupied the day before, put his elbows on the table, and rested his forehead in his hands.

‘I’m beginning to see things,’ he whispered. ‘This is not good. I’m going crazy. I swear I am! All this shit is getting the better of me. They’re trying to get me. I know they are. Can’t feel safe inside my own fucking apartment anymore…’

He glanced at the clock, which showed it was nine-thirty. He’d seen Mariella exactly twelve hours earlier.

Oblivious to his pain, Oliver suddenly sat up straight and remembered that he’d bought the engagement ring for Mariella, but here was the question he asked himself: had he? He couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. So he inspected the floor of his apartment for a few seconds before he noticed the small white bag containing the ring lying under the table. He deduced that it must have landed there when he had dropped to the floor. The back of his head and his shoulder blades were still hurting from the fall. He opened the bag and then the small box. The ring was still there! So it was all true, they were going to get married after all! Just let her say “no,” and she’ll discover empirically what the word “pain” can really mean, Oliver thought.

He fished his phone out of his pocket and called Mariella, panic mounting with each ring. She finally picked up after the fourth ring, just as Oliver was about disconnect.

‘Hello?’ she asked in a raspy voice. ‘Who is this?’

You idiot! Oliver scolded himself mentally. You woke her up! How’s that for a good start? And she didn’t even recognize your voice, that fucking whore. Delightful but still nothing but a–

‘Yeah. Hi, Mariella. This is Oliver,’ he said. He felt like a shy child meeting a new adult for the first time.

‘Oliver? Hi. What do you want, babycakes?’

I want to rip your fucking larynx out for using this infantilizing language with me, he answered internally.

‘Well, tomorrow’s Wednesday, and I’m calling to confirm our weekly meeting? I’ve got a handful of rather splendid ideas, and I think you’re going to love them.’

A brief pause. ‘Yeah. Yeah, sure. That sounds like a lot of fun.’

I could tell her a bomb just exploded across the street and that indifferent bitch would still give me that same answer…

‘Great! Please bring some black clothes with you.’ A brief pause. ‘So… I’ll see you tomorrow, right?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Oliver hung up. There was no point in continuing this ridiculous conversation, if one might even call it that. He looked at the phone and squeezed it until all his knuckles went white.

Who does that bitch think she is and who’s given her the right to talk to me like that? She depends on me, for fuck’s sake! I could dump her tomorrow and she’d rot in that shitty bar for the rest of her worthless life! Can’t even show me the slightest bit of respect!

Oliver noticed that he’d been panting. He took a step back, rested his back against a wall, and closed his eyes.

Calm down, Oliver. Calm down, will ya? said that voice again, a remote element in his thoughts. You will propose to her tomorrow. She will say “yes,” and then the two of you will marry. She will see you as her husband and she will be obedient. You will subjugate her with wedlock. And if she says “no,” she will learn her lesson the hard way, ain’t that so?

The voice was right, Oliver decided. He couldn’t have put it better himself. He could feel the blood rushing through his veins slowing down, and he was now able to control his breathing. He opened his eyes, tossed the ring along with his cell phone onto one of the armchairs, and headed to the kitchen. That ungrateful scoundrel had made him hungry.

Oliver crowned the quick breakfast with a cigarette, chasing it with the last bitter swallow of his coffee. After he’d put it out in the ashtray resting on the kitchen table, he went into the living room to catch up on some reading. He had been planning it for ages. A heap of about fifteen paperbacks was waiting for him, and he had begun to read only one. It was a relatively new resolution of his – Oliver wanted to read the great writers so that no one could accuse him of literary ignorance. He was an artist, after all, and could not therefore allow himself to be seen as or called a dumb illiterate by anybody. Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Hugo were among the authors he was to read, but now it was time to continue the book he’d already started – Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy.

After about an hour of reading, he didn’t have the mental strength to contain himself anymore. Half of the novel was more than enough to make him throw the book across the room.

‘What a load of horseshit,’ he muttered under his nose.

What kind of nobleman would want to marry a hooker to save her from prison? So what she became one because he’d raped her years earlier in the first place? Tough luck! Life goes on and that’s it! No one in their right mind would waste their time, throw away all their money and status just to show some fucking compassion to a whore! To a mere fucking slut! Oliver thought, and shook his head. Looks like those fancy novelists are not that smart, after all…

He sighed and unlocked his phone to check the news, hoping to empty his head of that benevolent nonsense. And, to his surprise, there had actually been a bombing attempt! The article said that two men from Rhinestone were arrested for attempting to destroy a bridge in the Latin Highland neighborhood. Oliver smiled as he thought that Latin Highland was so neglected by the city’s officials that no one would even care if the attack had come to fruition. His smile started to slowly fade, then suddenly grew even firmer, as though tattooed permanently on his face. He imagined how it would feel to be the author of such an act. What would it be like to destroy, let’s say, the City Hall building? Just imagining the victim count gave him shivers. He would go down in history as one of the most prolific killers. He’d be famous, but it would surely come with a price. He would be hated by a lot of people, especially the victims’ families. But on the other hand, he would definitely have many admirers and followers who would support him for what he’d done, too. After all, every killer had his groupies. In any event, it was always better to be hated but spoken of than to rot away in the dirt unknown for evermore, Oliver believed.

Maybe worth a try in the future? he pondered and swiped to the next news article.

Not to be forgotten was the next day. Mariella would most probably come by to model for Oliver (or herself, as was his belief), and so he had better start organizing this place for the photo session. He extended the black backdrop across the wall in the living room between the window and the two armchairs. It suddenly became so dark, he had to turn on the light to see anything in the room. He then placed two softboxes facing the backdrop, as if to guard the entrance to the corridor from both sides.

He was ready for her.

An empty, listless nothingness defined the rest of Oliver’s uneventful day. His mind felt desolate. Whole hours had passed by before he finally rose from the armchair and made his way to the bedroom.

Faint slivers of light snuck in from the street through the narrow slits of the blinds, illuminating the room in a dark orange glow. He rolled in bed from one side to the other, kicking uncontrollably until the blanket fell onto the floor. He hated it when he couldn’t sleep, which happened every time before an important event. He needed to calm down and was sure that a cigarette would help him achieve this goal.

He reached for the pack he usually kept on top of the small nightstand and found it to be empty. The bed let out a loud squeal when he lifted himself off the mattress.

“Shit” was the sole word that escaped his mouth when he realized that not only would he have to go out now, at one in the morning, and buy a new pack of cigarettes, but probably a new bed, too! The bed, however, he would deal with later in the week.

He dressed in the clothes he’d worn the day before and went out to the corner store, the same one where he had called his wife. Ex-wife…

The man behind the counter sighed. ‘Bu soatda nima kerak?’

Oliver had no idea why the guy always spoke to him in his native language. He didn’t even bother to respond. He just placed the index and middle fingers of his right hand against his lips. The vendor recognized the sign.

On his way back, Oliver noticed a couple of police cars lighting up the block in red and blue. Two uniformed officers were leading a handcuffed young man out of an apartment building and into the back of a squad car. Two women followed them. And although the sight wasn’t something terribly unusual to behold in Dillon, Oliver thought he’d seen those people somewhere before. He tried to remember where, but after a second or two, he deemed it too superfluous to bother him.

He was soon home and quickly opened the pack, lighting the first cigarette his fingers could find. He grabbed the ashtray, turned off the lights, and went back to the bedroom, which was almost devoid of any light, were it not for the slowly pulsating red tip in front of his face that every few seconds became brightly incandescent before returning to its dull glow. He stood directly in front of the window, enjoying the cigarette; from there he could see the street, Chen’s veterinary clinic, and the unkempt bushes behind the buildings that separated the streets from the railroad tracks. He tore his eyes away from the view to put the cigarette out in the ashtray.

Suddenly, the ear-splitting metallic shriek of the passing train forced him to take a quick, unsteady step back. He lost his balance and fell onto the bed, striking his head against the porcelain receptacle. The accumulated ash spilled all over his face and his bald scalp. The blow to the head was enough to knock Oliver out. He finally found himself in the long-desired state of repose before the big day.

END OF CHAPTER 10

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Chapter 9

Against All Odds

Erica had already been gone when Oliver woke up at approximately eight p.m. He propped himself up on his left elbow and noticed crumpled tissues scattered across the floor and a stain on the bedsheets, right by his crotch. He must have ejaculated in his sleep, he figured. Normally, he ejaculated in this bed with Mariella around.

Mariella…

Where was his head? He wanted to propose to her! She was to come in two days and he still didn’t have an engagement ring! He sat up on the edge of his bed and waited a while until his blood circulation returned to more or less normal. As he was sitting like that, he pondered the possible outcomes of this dicey undertaking. If she accepted his proposal, fine. But what if she said no? Why, he would have to kill her, plain and simple. Just like that crazy cat Gregory Raff, who had killed all those women and never gotten caught. And Oliver Morneau knew he was capable of harming people. He also now knew, as the events earlier that day had shown him, that he could get away with virtually any crime in this city. He could have spared that bum and that beggar, true, but when it came to Mariella, he would have no choice. He’d never be able to endure the notion of failing to convince Mariella that he’d be a worthy breeding male. Her denial would make him see himself as an even bigger failure than he was now, and the shame of it all would go on haunting him for the rest of his life. It would make his mother and her friends right, after all. That, in turn, would surely result in his taking his life, and he didn’t want to die yet! He wanted to live on and he wanted to live in peace! As much as Oliver wanted and desired Mariella, he would not and could not allow her to ruin his life like that. It was everything or nothing for him.

Oliver could feel a touch of winter in the air. Everything around him was bathed in a dull blend of white and orange from the tall streetlights overlooking the empty streets. The train passing behind Chen’s clinic had been bothering him more and more the last couple of months, and he shuddered every time he heard the long metal machine mercilessly speeding so close to his street. Now that he stood outside, the mechanical ruckus – no longer softened by walls, distance, or even the daily traffic – sounded exactly how he imagined the end of the world would.

When he finally thawed from the sound of the train, Oliver turned left and started walking into the mysterious night. He had barely reached the utility pole at the crossing when he stopped to look at the person who had done the same upon seeing him.

‘It’s you,’ Oliver said. Despite his bafflement, he managed to force a warm smile. ‘I… I admit I didn’t expect to run into you. And here of all places.’

Mariella pressed her lips and said, ‘Yeah…’ She was dressed in a black fur coat and leather pants of the same color.

Slightly taken aback by such a terse answer, he went on and asked, ‘So, where are you heading?’

She bit her lip and looked sideways. ‘I, uh, there’s a place I gotta be, and I’m already running late, so…’

‘I see. Oh, and what time is it?’

Mariella sighed, but nevertheless took out her phone and told him it was nine-thirty. ‘Almost.’

‘Nine-thirty, huh?’ Oliver said and crossed his arms. ‘Such a funny hour, don’t you think?’

‘Funny?’ Mariella had to ask. She had no idea how on earth an hour could be funny.

‘Yeah,’ Oliver retorted as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Like it’s not really early, but it’s not too late, either. It’s such a, I don’t know what the word is, lukewarm hour, right?’

Mariella had no idea how to respond to this and decided to simply agree. ‘Right,’ she said, shrugged, and added a wan smile on top. ‘Anyway, time for me to go.’

‘Sure, I understand,’ Oliver said, contrary to his thoughts. He did not understand one bit of this circus. Since when did she have the right to talk to him like that? He wanted to grab her by her hair and smash her face against that utility pole, but the sex… Mariella was the only sex he had and probably would have for the rest of his life. He had to act nice toward that haughty diva, at least for the time being.

‘Yeah. See you on Wednesday then,’ she said and went past him.

Oliver turned around. ‘Wednesday it is,’ he called after her and watched her walk toward her secret destination. He noticed she was staring at the sidewalk with wide eyes, as if he were a nuisance, an obstacle on her way from point A to point B, whatever those places might have been. Not once did she look back at him. He wanted to eviscerate her for that.

He then looked up at one of the streetlights. It was such a simple object. Its only purpose was to give light, to illuminate the darkness that impedes and impairs vision. Oliver was still looking at the tall light-giving construction when he thought, We are so, so very different from each other…

It took Morneau about ten minutes to reach the jewelry store. He found out that it was open twenty-four hours a day and it said on its website that if it was closed, all one had to do was ring the bell and someone would come open it, for they were “always open for business!” The store was wedged in between a hair salon and a variety store. He did as the site instructed and didn’t have to wait long before a meaty, middle-aged man with thick black hair and olive skin showed up.

‘Yes?’ the man asked. Oliver could barely hear him through the glass and the metal grate separating them.

Oliver cleared his throat. ‘I’m interested in buying a ring,’ he said so loudly that by now the whole neighborhood must have known why he was there.

The vendor nodded and cleared the way for Oliver to enter. He held the door open and beckoned him inside. ‘Please, come on in!’ he said in a strong foreign accent and made a circular motion with his head. ‘Security reasons, you know.’

‘Of course,’ Oliver said as he passed the threshold.

The man got behind the counter and said, ‘My name is Yanis Hatzidakis. How can I be of service to you, sir?’

‘I, uh, I’m looking for an engagement ring.’

‘Ah! Very well, please wait just a second,’ Yanis said and took out a white tray holding about twenty rings from the display case.

‘These are beautiful,’ Oliver said, hypnotized by the dazzling ornamental bands.

‘They truly are,’ Yanis replied. ‘So, how much do you want to spend, sir?’

‘I was thinking something up to five hundred bucks?’

‘Five hundred, eh? Let’s see.’ Yanis pulled out three rings and put them on the counter. He held his finger on each rings as he described it. ‘All of them are 10-karat. This one may look like silver, but it’s actually white gold. Both of these are yellow gold, only this one has twenty diamonds in it. The other one has forty-three.’

‘And they’re all under five hundred, yes?’

‘Well,’ Yanis smiled and shrugged. ‘Normally they cost about twelve hundred, but let’s say I’m ready to offer you a juicy discount. How does that sound to you, sir?’

‘Well, let me tell you, Mr. Hatzidakis – you’ve got yourself a customer here.’

‘I’m very happy to hear that, sir,’ Yanis said and suddenly held up both hands. ‘No rush here, either. Please take your time to decide.’

‘Thank you, but I think I already know which one I’m going for.’

‘Yes?’

‘The white gold one? It looks kind of special. Unique.’

‘Oh, it definitely is. I’m sure your future fiancée will appreciate it greatly.’ He leaned slightly closer and, with a tense smile said, ‘A special ring for a special lady, eh?’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Oliver said with a rather cheerful physiognomy, all the while struggling to get his wallet out of the inside pocket of his coat.

‘What is your preferred method of payment?’

‘Cash.’

‘Beautiful,’ Yanis said and started punching the keys on the register with his thick, hairy fingers. A smile appeared on his face just before he said, ‘Excuse the remark, sir, but buying an engagement ring at such a late hour and with cash? Looks like it’s really important for you to get it finally done, if I may say so.’

You have no fucking right whatsoever to comment on my life, you fat, nosy prick, Oliver thought but didn’t say. Instead, he reciprocated the smile and said, ‘Well, I guess you could say that. I’ve been a bit too lazy about it, so now I have to rush, if you know what I mean?’

Yanis nodded and said he did. He looked down at the counter as if he wanted to suppress a vicious outburst of impertinent laughter. Oliver wanted to punch himself in the gut and then slap himself in the face. Why the hell did he use the word “lazy” and not express himself differently? There were at least ten different ways in which he could explain his situation to the vendor. Explain… He always had to explain himself to everybody, too. How the fuck was anybody supposed to respect him if he always had to explain himself to others?

Yanis put the ring into a white cardboard box, which he placed inside a little white bag, and handed it over to Oliver, who thanked him and was quick to get out of the store before he got the chance to humiliate himself any further.

He hadn’t taken five steps out of the store when he suddenly heard two men shouting something at him. He turned around and, through the steam rising from a street grate, caught sight of two men dressed in thick winter jackets, one dark blue and the other bright red. Both of them were holding what looked like cigarettes in their hands.

‘Yo, watcha starin’ at, man?’ the guy in the red jacket said. ‘Oh, you bought some jewelry? I love me some bling-bling! Can I take a look at watcha got?’

Oliver didn’t think twice. He started to run faster than he ever had in his life. The two men threw their cigarettes away and bolted immediately after him.

‘Wait up, man!’ one of them said and fired a shot into the air. ‘I said wait up, motherfucker!’

His heart sped up to a point where he was sure it was going to stop. It was just a matter of time, he figured; he would die, there and then.

After about half a minute, from an ever-growing distance, he could hear one of them develop a violent, rasping cough, and the other one saying “Screw him, bro. We’re not going to get him anyway. Old man runs like a fuckin’ leopard.” But the fear for his life didn’t allow Oliver to stop just now; he kept on running until he reached his apartment, which he would in about ten minutes’ time.

The strenuous physical effort forced him to vomit on the still-visible traces of Lydia Mifflin’s blood on the sidewalk.

Fuck it, he commented mentally on the scene before his eyes as he imagined what his downstairs neighbors’ reaction to this mess would be. Let the rain wash it off.

He had barely made it up the stairs. It was when Oliver entered his apartment and turned on the lights that he noticed something exceedingly odd yet curious. First of all, it was the rotten stench that dominated his dwelling, as if someone had taken a dump on a corpse and let it sit there for over a week. But the most conspicuous element was the mishmash of dark smudges, as if made of charcoal, left on the wooden floor. Oliver wasn’t sure what it meant, but noticed that they led to the kitchen, so he decided to follow them and find out who or what the author of this filthy mess was. The stink was getting more and more pungent with each step he took, to the point where Oliver was forced to cover his nose with his scarf. He walked slowly into the kitchen and almost screamed at the sight of a human-like creature squatting next to the table. Sensing his presence, it suddenly turned its head around and fixed its gaze on him. It looked as if it had wallowed in a puddle of sludge and sewage. But its hideous semblance didn’t hinder it from smiling at him, showing all of its sharp but rotten teeth. It blinked at Oliver. Its eyes dazzled with gold, but he could tell they were filled with a malicious intent.

Oliver just stood there, frozen in shock. He wanted to run away but was unable to do so.

‘No… Life…’ the creature uttered. Its voice raspy and wheezing.

In unutterable anguish, Oliver felt the tears forcing themselves into his eyes. ‘What…?’ he asked while taking a step back.

Unmoved by the man’s reaction, the thing kept smiling at him. It shook its head briskly and said, as if choking, ‘There is… no… life… in you!’

It was after those words that Oliver Morneau’s body was forced to finally throw in the towel. The walls of his sanity closed in as the room went dark. His knees gave way, and he collapsed onto the smudged floor.

END OF CHAPTER 9

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Chapter 8

Lucky to Be Alive

It was about five in the afternoon when Oliver Morneau walked out of the precinct. The accumulation of all the intense events gave rise to an additional need for movement and breathing. He had to shake everything off – the crack house, the hallucinations, the footage, the cops; he didn’t know which one of them was the strangest. He needed to relax – big time! – and he knew just what to do.

Oliver couldn’t count on Mariella now, so he took out his phone together with the card Erica had given him and called the prostitute. He told her where and when she was to wait for him and hung up.

So consumed was Oliver by the thoughts that whirled inside his head that he didn’t even keep his head up while walking. He just stared at the sidewalk as it slid beneath his feet. His total contemplative immersion hindered him from watching out for any kind of danger. When he caught sight of a crosswalk emerging from the side of the cracked concrete, he suddenly – as if forced by some dormant instinct – turned toward it, completely ignoring the approaching taxi. Its driver jammed on his brakes and managed to stop the car just in time so as not to hit the inattentive pedestrian. In the blink of an eye, all of Oliver’s worries took a backseat as he realized what was happening. Without looking up at the windshield, he spread his arms and spat on the car’s hood.

‘Are you fucking blind?’ Oliver yelled in a voice that was still raspy from all the crying at the precinct. ‘You could’ve hit me, you son of a bitch!’

‘Get your eyes checked!’ the cab driver yelled back with his head and left arm out the side window. ‘You’ve got a red light! Now get the fuck outta my way!’

Morneau stared at the driver, his eyes wide beneath a fierce frown, and stepped back, letting the cab continue on its way. Breathing hard, he stood at the edge of the sidewalk and waited for his light to turn green. It didn’t happen often, but he felt regret.

How could I? That could’ve been Carlos! Oliver thought.

Everyone was going home from work, school, or some other event that had taken them away from their homes. The sheer multitude of people blurred, in Oliver’s eyes, into a single, faceless mass. Groups of people consisting of many different races, ages, and genders were walking past him as he was on his way to his apartment. He looked at them and thought there could be hundreds, nay, thousands of young women just like Mariella who looked for an easy ride to the top on this stretch of street alone! Some of them, however, were wearing baseball jerseys.

Sports fans…

Oliver had a special torture chamber in his heart for them. He couldn’t stand their sheepish smiles, the slowly fading happiness on their faces, and, most of all, their stupid fucking hats and jerseys! All of them would return to their pointless daily worries soon enough anyway, so why would they even bother wasting their precious time and money watching a bunch of juiced-up man-children run after a fucking ball like a pack of stray dogs chasing a bitch in heat? Thousands of years of civilization, scientific discoveries, grand philosophical inquiries and principles, the best ideas refined in the modern era, and all it amounted to was dumb people watching even dumber men throwing balls.

If that wasn’t the most evident symptom of the decline of civilization, he didn’t know what was. Bread and games were all those sheeple cared about.

Poor boy, his team lost. Boo-fuckin’-hoo, he thought as he’d finally walked past what seemed to be the last sports fan he encountered that day.

Oh how Oliver dreamed, longed for someone like Nero who would rise to power and gloriously set everything afire, make away with the old, and bring in the new and the pure. Of course he, as one of the custodians of high culture, an acclaimed and distinguished photographer, would get away and be spared from the dire consequences of the great fire. Oliver didn’t see himself as worthy of death; he would be one of those who would redefine civilization and all its essential values after all was burned and done away with.

After passing the sports fans, Oliver neared a couple of young men who were preaching the gospel to the teeming crowd.

‘People of Dillon!’ one of the young men announced in a vociferous cry. ‘The end is near, and you have to decide! Do you want to follow God? Or do you want to go down with Satan?’ He then opened his small, pocket-sized Bible. ‘The word of God says in James chapter one, verse eight, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways!” Do not be double-minded! Choose God! Choose Jesus today!’

The preacher’s companion was handing out pamphlets outlining the gospel to people whom he thought would be interested in the message they proclaimed. He offered a leaflet to Oliver too and asked, ‘Do you believe in eternity, sir?’

Oliver stopped to take the pamphlet. He looked at it for the briefest moment and shook his head, saying, ‘I don’t even believe in tomorrow, young man.’

He handed it back and walked on home.

Oliver was pleasantly surprised to see Erica standing by the entrance to his building so early. Finally someone he could rely on. She had on the same jacket she’d had in that decrepit crack house, but the red skirt and the white high-heeled boots were new.

‘You’re early,’ Oliver said as he opened the door to let her in.

‘Better three hours too soon than a minute too late,’ Erica said and stepped inside, her movements slow and unhurried.

The smile on Oliver’s face was accompanied by a slight scowl. ‘Certainly so,’ he said and followed her inside. He hated himself for not recognizing right away what obviously sounded like a literary quote, and for failing to answer her in an equally witty manner.

Once they entered Oliver’s apartment, he showed Erica the table and told her to take a seat at it.

‘Coffee?’ Oliver asked.

‘Definitely,’ Erica said. She put her white purse on the table and seated herself on one of the chairs.

While Oliver was setting the small cup with the dark, steaming brew in front of her, he simultaneously took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered one to Erica. She accepted it and let Oliver light it for her. He took a seat across from her and, with arms crossed and elbows resting on the surface, stared deep into her eyes. Apart from the cup and the purse, there was also a black, square, porcelain ashtray between them.

A small yet tense smile was her body’s response to this intriguing provocation. ‘What?’

‘You don’t look too cheerful.’ One of his brows was slightly raised above the usual level. ‘You’re okay?’ he asked Erica, without being certain if that was her real name. Probably not, he figured.

Erica drew on the filter for a few seconds and exhaled a dense vapor that rushed out of her mouth, but soon, as if tired from a quick start, hung lazily between the two. Initially, she didn’t want to answer him. Why should she? They weren’t friends. But then, encouraged by the fact that she didn’t have that many people to talk to lately anyway, she thought to humor him just the same. After a short pause reserved for her rumination, she shrugged and said, ‘What can I say? To make a long story short, I’m not so sure I have much of a future anymore. Whether I’ll even be around, let alone able to keep working.’

‘Oh. How so?’ Oliver asked, and puffed on the cigarette he’d just lit for himself.

‘I went to the doctor a few days ago and… he found a lump in my left breast. Wants to take ‘em both, says it could spread. I told him, “Fine, but who would want to fuck a hooker with no tits?” He said there were plenty of guys who were into that sort of thing. I mean, can you believe the nerve of that asshole? Can’t afford implants, either. Worst-case scenario, I’ll do something else. Mercy…’ She frowned and took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. We’ll see.’

As the smoke started to thin out, Erica noticed how Oliver nodded once and scratched his chin, looking somewhere past her. He didn’t say anything. He put the cigarette out, got up, pulled five hundred from his wallet, and handed it to Erica. She accepted the money, though not without initial reluctance; it was considerably more than she usually charged, and such generosity often came with its own peculiar demands. He then started to undress quickly, but when Erica was about to do the same, he stopped her from doing so, telling her she didn’t have to. She followed him to the bedroom where he lay down on the bed.

He turned to the side and invited her to lie behind him.

Erica did as she was told. ‘And now what, Mr. Creative?’ she asked. Her face was tired, yet still retained a faint cheer.

Oliver smiled. He liked that nickname.

‘Take my cock in your hand.’

And so she did. ‘You want me to–’

‘No. Just hold it,’ Oliver said in a quiet, soothing voice. ‘Let me sleep like this… I need some rest.’ He closed his eyes and, before a minute had passed, he drifted off.

END OF CHAPTER 8

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Chapter 7

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

Less than an hour had passed since his daughter’s death when Oliver arrived home. He had walked to his apartment on the premise that it would help him lose a pound or two. Besides, why would he have stayed in that miserable crack den? Because of Darla? He’d seen a couple of dead bodies in the last few days already, and he surely didn’t need to look at any more of those. And now that Darla was dead, what connection did he have to Lynette apart from a common past, which he so much abhorred?

He undressed, put all of his reeking clothes into a garbage bag, tied it tightly, and left it in the corridor to pick up later and dump on the sidewalk when he went out. What a shame it was to dispose of such expensive attire, but on the other hand, Oliver had recently bought a lot of coats and shoes of similar prices, so he most definitely wouldn’t notice if one coat or one pair of shoes were missing from his wardrobe. He was quick to dress in a pair of khaki pants, calf-leather shoes, and a black cashmere sweater, with a gray shirt underneath. He didn’t own sweatpants or a hoodie – those, he was convinced, were for poor peasants who wanted to sit around lazily inside their homes doing nothing after a day’s minimal, meaningless work. Oliver believed himself to be a hard-working man who didn’t have the time for entertainment aimed at commoners, and so revoltingly grotesque in his hideousness that the least he could do was to always dress in luxury clothing to obtain the slightest decency that a living human being could have.

After the last drops of his cologne landed on his neck, Morneau’s belly started to growl. He went into the kitchen with the intention of toasting some bread, spreading strawberry jam on it, and eating it. He didn’t have the strength to cook up anything more refined than that. He felt as if Lynette had sucked all the energy out of him that day, and he just wanted to put something, anything into his stomach to, at least temporarily, satisfy this nagging hunger.

Before he could take one step, however, his phone began to ring. Unknown number. He usually didn’t pick up calls from numbers he wasn’t acquainted with, especially out of fear of different kinds of scammers who stalked their potential victims in this very manner. But this time his curiosity got the better of him. He swiped the green icon and put the phone to his ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Well, hello there, Oliver,’ a man said. His voice sounded exactly like that of Oliver.

‘Who is this?’ Morneau asked immediately.

‘You know who this is, old man.’

He didn’t. As far as he could tell, he was talking to himself, but he didn’t have the will or time to play games now. ‘What do you want?’

‘I just wanted to give you a word of advice. Leave Mariella alone. Forget about her. Don’t ever meet her again or, I promise you, you will regret it.’

Oliver hung up. His lips quivered again. Who could that have been? And how the hell had that person obtained his number? And why did the guy sound exactly like him? How did he know about him and Mariella? For a brief second, Oliver thought of calling the number back but he didn’t find the courage inside himself to do so, the lack of which was caused by his ignorance of who actually had been on the other side of the call. Was he talking to himself or a talented con artist, a scammer, or just a computer-savvy prankster who’d managed to duplicate his voice? He turned off all sounds on his phone and tossed it onto the bed. On second thought, he put it back into his pocket (the same one where he kept Erica’s number, which, unlike the clothes, he had not wanted to dispose of) and went to the kitchen. He couldn’t think rationally with an empty stomach.

He put the bread into the toaster and pressed the lever down, but it wouldn’t stay down; it just popped right back up. He tried again several times until he snatched up the appliance, lifted it above his head – almost ripping the outlet out of the wall in the process – and slammed it down with all the strength he could muster. The thing fell apart into hundreds of small pieces of plastic and metal scattered all over the tiled kitchen floor.

This short yet strenuous deed left Oliver breathless. And as he beheld the dismantled toaster, he pointed a finger at it, assuring the broken thing that it got what it had coming to it.

Why am I talking to a machine? he asked himself. I ought to talk to people, to beings that can reciprocate my speech, and not to things. A smirk appeared on his face as the last thought came into his mind: People, things. What’s the difference, anyway?

Now that his toaster was toast, he had to think of making something else to eat, but the bread had been weighing heavily on his mind long enough for him to now crave only that and nothing else. Toast and coffee – that was something he’d never refuse. He suddenly remembered that he had another, brand-new toaster lying around somewhere in the basement. He’d once bought at a discount during a sale in one of the nearby appliance stores.

He headed there immediately.

The building’s basement was not a place he or his downstairs neighbors visited all that often, and it showed. Every single step of the stairs, the banister, every door handle was covered in a thick film of dust that started to resemble fur or sheepskin, but instead of being white, it had a color more akin to that of the clouds outside, which remained stubbornly dense and heavy. He switched the light on, its source a bare bulb dangling from a frayed cord right above the stairs. That was the only light available there, too; if one of the tenants wanted to see what was inside their storage cages, they would have to rely on that singular lamp, which wasn’t very bright to begin with, or their own flashlight. The smell was moist, almost earthy, and oppressive to the nose. Had Oliver been blindfolded, he would have thought he was in some moss-filled overgrown crypt instead of his basement.

Oliver opened his cage and grimaced as he tried to see anything through the weak light and the cobwebs obstructing the view. He was about to remove them, but ceased all movement when a certain voice he knew very well unexpectedly found his ears; it sounded different from how he remembered it, much more cracked and slurred, but he was sure it belonged to the person he was thinking of.

He turned around, ever so slowly, to make sure he was right. How wrong he wanted to be…

That someone was sitting in the corner, withdrawn into the shadows. The thick and solemn obscurity – gathered so intensely as though it were a tenant there itself – prohibited him from discerning any specific features. The only body part that couldn’t hide from the weak light was a thick, swollen leg that was almost devoid of any color except for the black toes and heel. It was covered in sores filled with dried-up pus and blood.

‘You don’t look too good, Oliver,’ said the woman in the enveloping shade.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Morneau asked in a half-whisper. ‘I just buried you! Why do you keep persecuting me, even from beyond the grave?’

‘Because you will never be self-reliant. You will always need someone to help you out in life, you little shit. Besides, is this how you’re supposed to talk to your mother?’

To try to meet her hidden eyes would be too much for Oliver, so he instead looked at her rotten foot when he said, ‘What do you mean I’m not self-reliant? I’ve lived here alone for so many years, haven’t I? And now I own this place. It’s mine!’

The inky toes curled for a second and then relaxed again. ‘If it were so, then you wouldn’t try and woo that snot-nosed courtesan!’

‘It’s not my fault she keeps coming back to me!’

Oliver didn’t see it, but he had a feeling that his mother nodded emphatically and glanced sideways, as she always did when contested. ‘Of course it’s not your fault! Nothing’s ever your fault, is it? Just like it wasn’t your fault you hadn’t been creative… it was that poor woman’s, the one you kicked in the face. In the face, Oliver! Who does that?’

Morneau’s lower lip started to quiver uncontrollably. ‘You know very well it wasn’t me. I’m not a suspect, and no one can prove I did it.’

‘Oh please, Oliver. Kindly spare me.’

‘But–’

‘Look. Just go to the police and get it over with. At least you’ll sleep easier at night. There’s no point in lying to the officers. Sooner or later they are going to discover it was you who kicked her. That poor, poor woman almost lost her life…’

Only a sigh escaped Oliver’s lips.

‘And poor that woman was indeed, Lydia Mifflin was. Poor and innocent. Innocent as a lamb, as they say.’

Oliver shut his eyes tight and squeezed out a few tears that ran down his cheeks and fell lazily onto the concrete floor. ‘What do you want me to do, mother?’ he asked.

‘It’s not about what I want, but what you ought to do.’ After a brief pause, she added, ‘Turn yourself in. Maybe they won’t be that hard on you if you admit to everything.’

It had been so quiet that Oliver could hear the doorbell ringing in his apartment all the way from the basement.

‘It’s probably the police,’ she said. ‘Now’s your chance, you worthless fucking scamp.’

He had begun to ascend the stairs when he paused upon the first step and asked, ‘Where’s my father’s grave?’

To this, only silence replied.

Psychiatrists always say never to trust your hallucinations, but what seemed to Oliver to be his mother had been right – it was the police. They were brief. They said they needed to talk to him about something of immense importance and that he would need to go with them to the precinct. The brevity of the statement suggested to Oliver that it wasn’t really an offer, and neither were they asking him a favor.

Blank walls, a door, three chairs, and a table with a laptop on it. That’s all there was in the interrogation room. Only one of the chairs was occupied – by Oliver. Detectives Ramirez and Wurlitzer were on their feet with their arms crossed.

‘Mr. Morneau,’ Wurlitzer said, ‘do you have any idea why you’re here?’

Oliver looked him in the eye for a second and said, ‘Why, I guess I’m here for the very same reason we talked about last time. How’s Mrs. Mifflin, by the way? Is she better?’ he asked, but not out of concern, but to preserve the image of an innocent bystander who was simply worried about the health of a feeble, brutally assaulted woman.

‘Well,’ Wurlitzer commenced and winced slightly, ‘she had surgery. And from what the doctor said, her brain is literally swimming in her own blood. It’ll take a lot of time before she comes back but they don’t know how much of her. Doesn’t have any insurance, either. Will probably be thrown out of the hospital before she fully recovers.’

Oliver couldn’t care less but regardless said, ‘Oh my, that sounds so horrible.’

‘Yeah,’ Wurlitzer added and looked at him with an impassive physiognomy.

‘Anyway, Mr. Morneau,’ Luis Ramirez jumped in. ‘We asked you to come down because we were able to recover some security footage from across the street. The assailant is clearly visible. We’d like you to take a look and tell us if you recognize him.’

Oliver’s eyes jumped back and forth from Ramirez to Wurlitzer before he took a deep breath and nodded briskly. ‘Sure.’ He wondered, had the time come when he would be exposed to the whole world as a worthless criminal, an apathetic monster? He didn’t want to be looked down upon by the authorities. He didn’t want to be held in contempt by the general public. He’d play ball for now and then think of something quickly in case he found himself in peril, he figured.

‘Thank you, sir. We appreciate that,’ the corpulent Ramirez said and opened the laptop. ‘I’m sure this won’t take more than a minute.’

‘As I said, no problem,’ Oliver reassured the detective and offered a trembling smile.

The media player appeared on the screen immediately.

‘Look,’ Ramirez said, ‘before I play this, I want you to know one thing – right now, the only people who know about this tape are just you and the two of us. Ready? Here we go,’ he said and hit the play button.

The recording was black and white. It was dark, but everything that mattered was visible. Oliver was standing in the doorway. He threw the money at the woman. She got to her knees and started to collect it. He kicked her in the face. She fell, her body shaking uncontrollably. Fuckin’ Eric Chen and his stupid cameras!

Why? Why had he had to do this? Most crimes were so easily detected, especially those done by such incompetent amateurs like him! He should have known better – he was subject to failure from the very beginning.

After taking off his glasses and setting them beside the laptop, Morneau started to laugh, but his laughter quickly turned into despair. Now it was neither pride nor arrogance, but dread and a vicious terror that were his masters. He covered his face with his trembling hands and started to weep. He knew it – had known it all his life – that he wasn’t born to be happy. All his life he’d tried to turn his bad luck into bliss, or at least contentment, but all he managed was to make things worse or equally bad. He had traded hypothermia for fever. Constipation for diarrhea. There was no way out. The deep conviction of his predestined misery made him think, and the thoughts could be summarized in a careless “whatever,” for no matter what he did, there was no escape from this doomed predicament. He’d better admit to everything right away, he figured.

‘Mr. Morneau? Are you all right?’ Ramirez asked.

Oliver looked at the detective. His eyes were crisscrossed with a crimson network of minute veins and encircled by a reddish hue around the upper and lower lids. He was afraid of losing his shit in front of them. What would they think of him? That not only was he spiteful, but also nutty like some damn fruitcake! He had to recover his composure and regain control. If not of the situation, then at least of himself!

With a puffy face and lips covered in tears and mucus, he admitted, ‘It was me…’

If there was one feeling the police officers now shared, it would be that of perplexity. They looked at each other askance and turned their eyes on Oliver again.

‘Mr. Morneau,’ Wurlitzer said and took a step forward, ‘I’m not sure I–’

‘It was me, okay?’ Oliver screamed at the detective from the top of his lungs. ‘I did it! I kicked her in the face!’

‘Sir, what are you talking about?’ Ramirez asked as if in a rush. ‘That’s not you in the video. All we wanted to know was whether you recognized the guy. That’s it.’

Morneau didn’t know what to think anymore. Were they making fun of him? Were all of his tears shed for nothing? They must never think of him as a crybaby – now he had to stick to his role as the perpetrator. In a much calmer voice, he said, ‘But it really was me. I… I did it.’ He looked alternately at the two detectives with pleading eyes.

‘So you’re saying you don’t recognize the assailant?’ Ramirez said and joined Wurlitzer in the doorway.

Morneau didn’t answer.

Wurlitzer let out a sigh. ‘Okay, I think that’d be all for today then,’ he said and nodded. ‘Thanks for your time.’

Ramirez shrugged and added, ‘You’re free to go. Have a nice day.’

They left the door open and Oliver was alone in the interrogation room. Uniformed officers passed by with folders and paperwork, as if nothing had ever happened. Just another day at the office. Oliver opened the laptop once more to take a last look at the man in the video.

Without a shadow of a doubt, he could see his very own face. So why couldn’t the cops see it?

END OF CHAPTER 7

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Chapter 6

A Blast from the Past

The next morning, Oliver was more than glad to be woken up by Lynette’s email message, which interrupted the nightmare he had about a robust, seven-foot-tall cellmate pulling all of his teeth out. The man did that to use Oliver’s mouth as his private sex toy whenever he felt like it, leaving Oliver with no defense at all; he didn’t even have the teeth to cut off his tormentor’s torture device. A sigh of relief escaped his lips upon realizing that he was still in his bedroom and not in some supermax prison in the middle of nowhere.

He reached for the phone lying on the nightstand and unlocked it. The email was authored by Lynette. She asked whether Oliver could call her, with her number typed underneath it. He thought about it. If he did so, Lynette would come into possession of his private phone number and he would be forced to change it sooner or later; he couldn’t be bothered to do that now. He rubbed his chin and wondered if the owner of the nearby corner store would let him make a call from the landline. He probably would, for a few bucks. He put on his coat and went out.

The wind outside was so strong that Morneau thought it was going to rip his face off his skull. The clouds overhead weren’t any consolation either; they were dark, heavy, and ominously threatened rain. It was drizzling already.

It took Oliver only a few minutes to get to the store. He stepped inside, holding out a couple of dollars. ‘Can I use your phone?’ he asked, and slid the bills across the counter.

The vendor nodded and handed him the cordless. ‘Ha. Tashqariga chiq,’ he said.

Oliver blinked. ‘Pardon?’

‘Outside. Bad for business.’

There was nothing to block the wind, so Lynette would probably have trouble hearing him clearly. Good, he thought. That meant they wouldn’t have to talk for too long. He punched the number from the email into the square buttons, and awaited that old hag to pick up.

She did right away. Oliver figured she must have had her phone in her hand already. ‘Yeah? Hello?’ Her voice was simple and guileless, just as he remembered.

‘Lynette? This is Oliver,’ he said and rolled his eyes.

‘Oliver? Yeah! Hi, how are you?’

‘You wrote to me in your email that you wanted to come to Dillon and talk to me. I was wondering when you wanted to fly over here?’

‘Hello? I can barely hear you!’ she yelled. ‘Gosh, where are you?’

Oliver felt each and every muscle of his body becoming tense. ‘I asked, when do you intend to come?’ he yelled back, emphasizing each syllable.

‘When? I am literally on my way to Dillon as we speak! I would’ve come a bit earlier but there turned out to be something wrong with the plane and we had to have an emergency landing in Newborn, you know?’

Should’ve crashed into the fucking ground, he thought. It would save him a lot of time and nerves. He couldn’t stand his wife, or ex-wife. Why the hell did he still call her his wife in his head, anyway?

Oliver, lost in his thoughts, had to ask again. ‘Wait a minute. What do you mean you’re on your way? Where are you exactly?’

‘Oliver, listen to me because I’m not going to repeat myself anymore. I’m at the airport. Newborn Metropolitan Airport,’ she said. After a short silence, she added, ‘It says here it was built in nineteen twenty-eight and the first official landing occurred in nineteen thirty-one, but I don’t know whether that’s late or early for an airport to be built. What do you think?’

He didn’t give a flying fuck when the airport had been built but didn’t say it. Instead, he asked, ‘So, when do you think you’ll be here?’

‘I don’t know. Eleven a.m.’

Oliver closed his eyes. That was another thing he hated about her – she always had to put an “I don’t know” before telling him something she knew for a fact! And he hated himself for continuing this painfully redundant conversation.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘you think you could pick me up from the airport? I mean the one in Dillon.’

A snicker escaped from Oliver’s lips upon hearing his wife’s – ex-wife’s – question. ‘Dream on, woman,’ he said. He didn’t own a car to begin with but he wouldn’t tell her that. And even if he did, he would never torment himself by driving through three districts to pick up a person he so much despised.

A loud sigh came from the other side. ‘Oliver, I’m not sure I appreciate you addressing me this way. It sounded kind of sexist, you know?’

He ignored her once more and said, ‘We can meet at…’ Oliver didn’t know where at first, but then he remembered a diner near him and gave her the address. He told her to meet him there at twelve.

‘All righty, then! I’ll take a cab and I guess I’ll see you there, right?’

‘Twelve. Don’t be late,’ he said and hung up.

What was that all about, he wondered? They had been divorced for over thirty years and now they talked like that, out of the blue. What could that woman want from him just now, after so many decades?

The waitress was a woman in her early twenties. She had a slender figure and long, curly, black hair.

‘Hi, I’m Clara. What can I get you?’ she asked, her voice ever so amicable.

‘I’ll have a slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee. Lotta cream, lotta sugar.’

‘Coming right up,’ Clara said and took off with a bright, radiant smile.

‘Thanks, Clara,’ Oliver said and observed her ass working inside her skirt, almost ripping the fabric to shreds. He wondered whether Mariella would have been jealous, had she seen him like that.

Lynette was late. He was stuffing this awful pie into his mouth, sitting alone like some stupid motherfucker. There was a couple sitting in the booth in front of him, a woman behind him, and an older man reading a newspaper in the far back near the old jukebox that had been put there for purely decorative reasons, it seemed.

The silence in the diner had a heavy, oppressive quality to it. Oliver felt invaded by the fact that every single ping created whenever the spoon touched the coffee mug, or the fork touched the plate, could be heard acutely throughout the whole establishment. He felt as if he were surveilled, his every move subject to intense scrutiny and, eventually, judged and evaluated in order to determine whether he was worthy of being considered a valuable human being who deserved one’s respect or – on the contrary – nothing more than trash, a waste of human flesh that didn’t know how to behave in the simplest of situations. What killed him even more was the fact that it was not in his power to influence his supposed judges in any way, shape, or form. It was totally up to them; he was at their mercy, and he was sure that he was doing everything wrong, especially the more he thought about it. Now he did not hate only himself for that, for letting himself be judged, but also everyone else present in that room, for now even the young waitress, whom he thought a simpleton much inferior to him for having such a lousy job, seemed to regard him with a judgmental look. Who the fuck did she think she was, glancing in such a condescending way at him? His immediate thought was how polite and affable she would become once he had fucked the living shit out of her. She was lucky he knew his limits…

And there she finally was, his ex-wife, with her wrinkles, red nose, disheveled graying hair, and those cheap rags she probably got at a thrift store or some other, even lesser-known, donation center. Morneau turned back to face his coffee when she waved at him.

‘Long time no see, Oliver!’ Lynette said after sitting down. A broad and cheerful smile adorned her freckled face that looked a bit haggard, but the woman still had a sweet and kind air to her.

He shrugged.

She ordered a coffee and thanked the waitress in advance.

‘So, what can I say?’ she said and spread her hands. ‘The ride was okay. I think we took the Ganchuk expressway. Is that what it’s called? Anyway, I told the driver where I wanted him to take me and gave him the address. He gave me that weird look but didn’t say anything.’ Lynette pursed her lips and looked around. ‘Must have been an immigrant or something.’

Oliver blinked slowly. He moved his hand in a circular motion and said, ‘Turning to the merits…’

Clara, the waitress, came back with the coffee and placed it in front of Lynette with a smile.

‘Lynette, you wrote that you had to see me about something urgent and important. Would you care to finally tell me what this is all about?’

From one moment to the next, her face became somber. She gave him a look he knew only too well. It was the same look of solemnity and disappointment she gave him when he had handed her the divorce papers. ‘It’s about our daughter, Oliver. Darla.’

A trace of a smile lingered at Oliver’s mouth. He’d never seen her, but the then-fetus was the nail in the coffin when it came to his leaving. Thank goodness Lynette never brought up alimony. He should thank her for that, but then he decided not to lower himself in relation to his ex-wife.

‘What about her?’ Oliver asked as he was chewing vigorously on his pie.

It seemed to Lynette that he was more interested in the filling that had spilled on the plate than in what she had to say.

‘It’s, uh, I don’t know. It’s complicated, Oliver.’

‘Try to make it quick, then,’ he said and spread his hands. ‘Simplify it.’

Her brows drew together. She looked out the window at the people filling up their cars at the gas station across the street.

‘If there was one thing Darla always wanted, it was to meet her biological father. I used to tell her how we had met, who you were and what you did for a living. She loved that and always asked me when you’d come back. She even prepared a seat and an empty plate for you each Christmas, hoping you would show up one day.’

‘That’s a touching little story,’ Oliver interjected.

‘But it’s true,’ protested Lynette.

‘Oh, I’m sure it is. But you see, it’s not really my problem.’

‘Just hear me out!’

‘If you cut to the fucking chase, maybe I would.’

‘Look. She came here all the way from Hastings to look for you – her own father, mind you. But she couldn’t find you… Darla had maybe a hundred bucks in her wallet and no place to stay, and after a few days, I didn’t hear anything from her anymore. With the little money I had, I managed to hire a private eye to find out about her whereabouts. Word on the street is she met the wrong kind of people and got hooked on drugs, and God knows it’s not difficult to fall into that in a city like this…’

Oliver nodded. He put the cutlery down so it rested against the plate and took a napkin to wipe off what was left of the pie around his mouth. ‘So what do you want from me? What do you want me to do?’

Lynette rummaged through her purse and took out a piece of paper with an address written on it, which she handed to Oliver.

‘This is where Darla can be found. Supposedly. All I know is that it’s some kind of abandoned building – one of those where people who use drugs eventually wind up. Can you take us there?’

‘Us?’ Oliver looked around. ‘You and whom?’

‘Me and you. I’m sure your presence would help–’

‘Forget about it! I’m not doing it. Let’s say we find her and then what? What could she possibly want from me, money? I didn’t even want a child in the first place and now I’m supposed to waste my time and risk my life for a, what, a derelict junkie I hardly ever knew?’

‘But she’s your daughter and she loves you!’ Lynette raised her voice, staring hard at him. The whole diner went into absolute silence. All eyes present were set on Oliver and Lynette. ‘I never asked you for anything, not one stinking penny. I raised her all by myself. You know the city. I just want you to do this one little thing and then I’m out of your life for good.’

Oliver grew more and more uncomfortable with the stares aimed directly at him, but the offer was tempting.

‘If you won’t do it for me, then do it at least for your number one fan. For her.’

The intense stares were eating him alive. He couldn’t take it anymore. ‘Okay, okay. Fine. Let’s get the hell outta here.’

He threw a crumpled twenty onto the table and walked out of the joint without holding the door for Lynette.

Oliver checked the address on his phone and concluded it was within walking distance.

Lynette’s face told him everything he had to know about what impression the city made on her, and she hadn’t seen anything yet; she resembled a little girl in perpetual awe, utterly unaware of the world and its weights, someone whose concerns lay far from any serious matters. Oliver didn’t give a rat’s ass if she’d “raised Darla all by herself,” just as he didn’t give a rat’s ass about Darla. Unlike him, Lynette wouldn’t survive a single day in this jungle of concrete and steel and her daughter was the best proof of this. He, on the other hand, had lived all his life in Dillon, and that, according to Oliver, made him far superior to anyone who lived in any other city on the planet. All the richest cities in the world didn’t matter; everyone wanted to live here but not everyone could. He was on top and there wasn’t one person in the world who could overthrow him. But even though he felt safe and confident next to his clumsy ex-wife, one look at her was enough for the nausea that defined his past to return.

Lynette Marson was born and raised in Hastings but moved to Dillon after her twenty-fifth birthday. Initially, the move occurred solely for the purpose of taking care of her sick aunt Jane, who, after breaking her pelvis and part of her spine in a car accident, was bedridden and needed all the help she could get. The doctor told Jane she would need at least six months, or even a whole year until she could finally start walking again. And since her stay would be that long, Lynette was required by law to get a new ID card issued by the local authorities. She therefore went to the nearest photo studio to “get her face on that ID,” as she had told her aunt before she left the apartment that day.

Oliver first met Lynette when he still lived with his mother in that rat-infested apartment in South Belmont. He was twenty-seven and managed to get a job in the King Photo Studio owned by a recently-arrived Chinese immigrant at that time. The owner went by Joe King, though his original name was Wang Jiu. In his native language, his surname meant “king.” Whenever he introduced himself to someone, he’d say “Hi, I’m Joe King, but I can be serious, too!” Joe King hired Oliver after seeing his artsy pictures. “You got talent, kid. The salary here isn’t high, but you could learn a thing or two with me,” Joe told Oliver, and Oliver said he had no problem with that. Staying away from his reproachful mother and doing the stuff he loved for about a dozen hours every day sounded like the perfect deal for him. He’d do that for free, so a bit of money on top didn’t hurt.

On one pleasant, cloudless day, a pretty young woman came into the studio whose unspoiled beauty, shaped by the fresh countryside air, could only be described by those who saw her as breathtaking. Oliver fell immediately in love with her pearly smile, with her long blond hair, and the small freckles dotting her face. They gave her an air of a childish thoughtlessness that he adored. He noticed that she wasn’t a local the second she opened her mouth, and boy, did she talk a lot! She told him right away what kind of photo she needed, where she was from, why she was staying in Dillon, and wrapped her little speech up by apologizing for talking so much because he probably didn’t even care anyway. He didn’t, but Lynette was the first woman who talked to him voluntarily, and she did so with so much enthusiasm, that an urgent desire stirred within his body just by looking at her. He suddenly appreciated every fiber, every atom of her being, and wanted her just for himself. He told her that she shouldn’t be sorry and that he would love to hear more about life in Hastings. He’d never been there before, and to a lot of Dillon’s residents that region seemed like an entirely different world. A bit similar, maybe, yet vastly different – and that was what made it so intriguing, he argued.

The second time they met was when she came to pick up her photos. Oliver didn’t hesitate to invite her for a walk, suggesting they grab something to eat while he showed her a bit of the city. Lynette didn’t know anyone in Dillon or South Belmont apart from her aunt who was confined to her bed, and since the area wasn’t the safest, it was reassuring to have someone she could trust as a friend. Oliver wasn’t the most handsome guy she’d ever known, but he had something charming about him, and he seemed to be a good listener, which she admired. Most of the time, Jane was far too tired to endure her niece’s talking all day long, so Lynette accepted Oliver’s invitation. They met the same day in front of her aunt’s apartment building, when Oliver finished work.

It was a sunny July day, and even the buildings, despite having their facades covered in soot, gained a new kind of beauty and appeal thanks to the warm, orange sunset. Oliver first took her to a fast-food joint, where they talked over a couple of cheeseburgers and a small soda, which they shared. Then each of them ordered an ice cream, and they wandered out into the streets. It was already dark outside, and Lynette expressed her worries about being mugged or assaulted. Oliver understood and told her that he knew a place nearby where they could definitely sit in peace and quiet and enjoy each other’s company. The place he had in mind was the nearby cemetery. “Are you sure we can stay here?” Lynette asked. Oliver told her not to worry. Of course, that did nothing to still her worries, but at least she wasn’t verbalizing her concerns to him anymore. The little light that managed to penetrate the dense fog lying thickly over the graveyard allowed Oliver to see the way Lynette was licking and sucking the last of her ice cream from the cone. That caused something in him he never would have expected; for the first time in well over a decade, he got an erection! Inspired by this unforeseen physiological phenomenon, he asked Lynette whether she would be willing to do to his penis what she was doing to her ice cream. She was flabbergasted by the question and by the directness and ease with which Oliver asked it, but upon seeing how determined he was to get an answer, she said that she wasn’t so sure if she’d be ready to do something like that at such an early stage of their friendship. On the other hand, she added, she would be okay if they did it the traditional way, if that would console him. That was more than Oliver had expected to get in the first place. He nodded briskly and got up from the bench. He took Lynette’s hand and led her to an empty burial ground covered in neatly mowed grass between two graves. In the meantime, he fumbled with his zipper to pull out his hard, insistent cock. Over ten years it had waited, dormant, and now demanded the attention it had been denied for so long. He then pulled down Lynette’s panties from beneath her short denim skirt, and laid her down on the cold soil. The act was hasty and awkward, and it took place on the same spot where decades later Oliver Morneau would bury his mother.

A couple of months later, the apprentice photographer was forced by his deeply reputation-conscious mother to marry Lynette, after the young woman had announced to them that she was pregnant with Oliver’s child. In answer to Oliver’s discontent about the costly ceremony, Susan Morneau said, “You shouldn’t even have touched that, that woman!” She spoke the last word as though it meant nothing less than murderer. “What was going through your head when you knew her, Oliver?” she asked, to which he replied that Lynette was able to restore in him something that she had once destroyed. That was his first attempt at defiance.

Trying to appease his mother and the mother of his child, Oliver took Lynette to be his wife in a civil ceremony at city hall. But as it soon turned out, even the sacred bond of matrimony and the little miracle of healing Oliver from his troublesome penile condition weren’t strong enough to keep the two lovebirds together.

By and by, the pregnant Lynette started to make him feel as though she was chipping away at his masculinity by constantly telling him what to do. She told him to get a new job, that he didn’t earn enough money, that photography was not enough to support a family. She complained that they didn’t live together, later claiming she wouldn’t even dare dream of having a house of their own, an assumption based on Oliver’s artistic ambitions. He was pissed at her for not appreciating – or at least tolerating – his passion, and for fucking with his creativity; she was the sole reason he had been unable to shoot any interesting pictures ever since he had knocked her up. He was the man in that relationship, not her! Just because she carried a few extra cells in her body didn’t mean she suddenly had the authority or the privilege to push him around and tell him what to do! The final nail in the coffin was her denying him the sex. Lynette didn’t want to traumatize the child before it was even born.

That was when Oliver called it quits. He didn’t care about her or the baby anymore. He handed her the divorce papers and told her she was free to do whatever she wanted, as long as she didn’t bother him. A week after the divorce was finalized, Lynette’s aunt died from complications related to bedsores. Aunt Jane’s landlord put the apartment back for rent, and Oliver (for artistic reasons) and his mother (for social reasons) would not allow the pregnant Lynette to move into their apartment. So when Oliver finally ended their short-lived marriage, Lynette was left with no choice but to pack her bags and head back to Hastings, where she would live with her mother, give birth to and raise the baby she named Darla (after her favorite child actress, Darla Hood), and make a living working behind the counter of a gas station.

Oliver didn’t have a clear idea of what he was going to do once they reached their destination. He simply decided to follow the directions his app was showing him and let his wife – or ex-wife – do the rest. One part of him was repulsed by what he had allowed to happen to himself, but at the same time, he was curious to meet his daughter, who, as Lynette had said, was a fan of his. This was never a problem to the photographer, meeting someone who could recognize him and feed and sustain his limitless self-absorption. Of course Oliver would never put it that way; to him, it was simply common sense that people ought to treat him with the admiration and reverence he justly deserved. Besides, there was another advantage to meeting that Darla – she might have a lot of female friends who could help him replace Mariella in case she ever decided to leave him, which was a constant risk, especially now that her ex had also reappeared in her life.

Morneau started to get an idea of their destination when he saw the huge, abandoned, and dilapidated apartment building on the opposite corner. He remembered it well; he once had a classmate living in that building, which was now ravaged, gutted, and empty – even though it had once been wonderfully vivid, flourishing with different cultures thanks to the many immigrants who used to inhabit it. People come and go. What to do…

The graffiti-covered door, which barely hung on its hinges, almost fell when Lynette tried to open it. The ex-couple couldn’t agree on what was safer to use – the elevator or the stairs. Both the machine and the stairwell presented grave dangers to their lives, but when they saw that a skinny man with a thick beard and long dreadlocks ran down the stairs, they decided to use those to go up. In the same instant, they both thought it wouldn’t be all that hard to find their missing daughter. The place had only three stories, after all. The corridors were the problem. They were very wide and spacious, as if designed specifically by its residents to maximize space – the torn walls and lack of any doors gave that place its uneasy openness.

They split for a while without realizing it and searched for Darla in separate areas.

Oliver thought he was inside a freak museum. There were indications that the electricity in this place worked just fine but there were no lamps, not one single light bulb turned on. Was this their way of hiding, he thought? It was a possibility, but that wouldn’t explain the small bonfire the dwellers had made on the second floor, with a pile of broken (probably stolen) paving stones as its base so the fire wouldn’t touch the ground and burn the building down. It was just a matter of time until that happened, anyway, the photographer was sure. Near the impromptu bonfire stood a young woman with a prosthetic arm ending in two hooks that held her cigarette.

When she noticed Oliver looking at her, he knew immediately that not everyone in the building was in favor of his presence.

She yelled at him, ‘The fuck you looking at, old man? Huh? Want a handjob?’ She then waved her stump at him, up and down, and added, ‘What? At least they won’t turn yellow from the cigarettes!’

It seemed that no one present – and there were quite a lot of people standing, squatting, or sitting pretty much everywhere – reacted to her overwrought screaming, so Oliver decided to follow suit and simply walk on.

He passed a man who, while pressing a handful of rotten fruit into his face and inhaling very deeply, stood over torn garbage bags and calmly ejaculated a thick yellowish liquid onto them. On an old couch near the opposite wall there sat a trio of friends who were watching TV, entirely engrossed in the snowy static visible on the small screen of the receiver.

It must have been a couple of minutes since Lynette had unconsciously wandered away from her ex-husband. Oliver had had it with staying in this filthy pigsty for that long. The floor was covered in litter, vomit, piss, shit, cum, syringes, and other objects one would rather not step on, especially in their recently-bought shoes. And even as a smoker, he wasn’t able to bear the pungently acrid and nauseating odor of the bonfire smoke and a smell that strongly indicated the presence of a makeshift drug lab nearby. His lifeless eyes, hidden under a fierce frown, spotted a tall, slender woman standing in a far corner. He couldn’t make out whether she was old or young from the distance, but once he’d approached her, he could clearly perceive that she was at least five or ten years his senior. She had long, wavy black hair, pale skin, and deep-set, haughty eyes with a thick layer of eyeliner applied along their edges. She was dressed in black lingerie and had her shoulders covered with a short, half-opened fur jacket, which allowed Oliver to sneak a peek at her visibly ample and heavy bosom whose battle against gravity had become increasingly futile. White pearls were adorning her ears and her swan neck, which – although long – was covered in veins and wrinkles.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked Oliver in a mellifluous, sensual voice.

‘Yeah,’ Oliver answered succinctly. ‘I’m looking for a certain Darla. Darla Marson? Do you happen to know her?’

She took a cigarette out of a transparent case. Oliver was quick to light it for her. She offered him a challenging smirk. ‘Everyone here knows Darla, Mr…’

‘Oliver,’ he said and nodded reassuringly.

The woman raised a brow, and the right corner of her lip went slightly up. ‘Erica.’

Oliver’s voice suddenly dropped an octave. He could feel his blood pressure almost exploding in his temples. ‘Do you know where I could find her?’

‘Top floor.’

‘Thank you, Erica,’ Morneau said and turned toward the stairs.

‘I can give you a good time, too, you know?’ Erica said with an urgent yet controlled voice.

Oliver faced Erica like a proud father and asked, ‘Is that so?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Erica answered, her tone much more reassuring now.

He looked her up and down and started to breathe heavily. ‘You got a number?’

‘Sure do,’ Erica said and offered Oliver a card.

He didn’t say anything. He locked his eyes on Erica’s and let himself be overpowered by the wild urge that surged from somewhere deep within him. He approached her, the tips of their noses almost touching, put the card into the inside pocket of his black coat, secretly withdrew two hundred in cash, and put the bills between Erica’s breasts.

‘When I call you,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘you will take a cab and meet me at my place. Got it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Erica answered and winked at her temporary paymaster.

What excited him the most about this encounter was not the fact that she was so open to him, nor her physical attributes that despite her age he still found quite remarkable and noteworthy. What gave him the biggest thrill was that he owned that human being. For just a few lousy dollars, that person turned into his property until he’d be done with her. That was also why he regarded Erica in such contempt; contempt for her eager willingness and readiness to give herself away like that to such an ugly and downright abhorrent caricature of a man he knew himself to be. He shook his head as if to get rid of the tormenting excitement and headed toward the stairs.

Just before touching the banister, he was approached by Lynette, who blinked at him three to five times in one second. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all around this hellhole! It’s so easy to get lost in here…’

Oliver’s nostrils dilated as he looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’ve found out where your trampy daughter is.’

‘What? You did?’ Lynette asked with her brows raised so high, they almost vanished behind her bangs. She let the insulting remark pass; she did not want to make a fuss about it just to save time and finally find Darla.

‘Yeah. I asked around.’

‘And?’

‘Top floor. After you.’

After asking a few other squatters for Darla along the way, the ex-couple was finally able to locate their daughter. She was sleeping under the window of a small but empty room. Mold occupied every single corner where wall met ceiling. The wallpaper had come off a long time ago, it seemed, for it was lying all over the dust-covered floor. The young woman was covered in a torn and weathered plaid blanket. Her hair was greasy and glued to her sweaty forehead. Her face looked like a bare skull covered in the thinnest layer of skin, which in turn was covered in small sores and scar tissue.

Oliver was standing unmovingly, resting his shoulder on the door frame with his hands in his pockets. He scrutinized her physiognomy but failed to find any striking similarity between himself and his supposed daughter.

Lynette, on the other hand, was fighting back the tears that had started to collect in her eyes. She could barely recognize her baby, but this was no time for crying. She had to be strong for her only daughter. She took a few steps forward, gingerly, and whispered her daughter’s name. When that had no effect, she came one step closer still and called her name slightly louder. ‘Darla, honey…’

Darla’s eyes suddenly sprang open. She stood up, let the blanket fall to her feet, and pointed a handgun at her mother. ‘What do you want?’ she inquired rapidly.

‘Darla!’ her mother screamed. ‘Darla, it’s me, your mother! Don’t point that gun at me!’

But Darla wouldn’t listen. With her gun still aimed at Lynette’s forehead, she asked again, but much more slowly this time, ‘What do you want and who’s that guy? Is he a cop?’

Lynette forced a smile, although her eyes were still expressing the deepest sadness a mother can feel. ‘No, Darla. No, no. He’s not a cop. That’s Oliver Morneau. This man is your father, Darla.’

Darla looked hard at him with tired, squinted eyes. There was a tense silence for a few seconds when she finally mustered the strength and courage to ask: ‘So. You’re my father, huh?’

Oliver shrugged and looked at her indifferently. He pointed with his nose at Lynette. ‘That’s what she said.’

‘Well, just look at this perfect scene,’ Darla said. Her eyes shifted alternately from her father to her mother. ‘The family’s finally reunited. Mommy and daddy have come to pick up their little daughter, ain’t that sweet now?’

The distressed mother extended an open hand toward her daughter. ‘Yes, my little star. We can go home and–’

‘And what?’ Darla exploded so abruptly that it caused Lynette to jump back. ‘You wanna say that what I’m doing here is bad? That it’s somehow, what, inherently wrong? And how is all this here worse than what I had to go through, all those years, huh?’ She pointed the gun at Morneau. ‘This is all your fault, you fucking coward! Raising a child was too much of a hassle for you? Look around you! Look at this and know that you are the sole person responsible for me being here!’

‘Darla,’ Lynette pleaded.

The daughter pointed the handgun back at her mother. ‘Don’t you “Darla” me! What did you do to make any difference in the past? You have no moral high ground to talk to me!’

‘Darla, sweetheart,’ Lynette extended her hand once more. ‘The past was tough, I know. I really do. But who said that the future can’t be better than the past or even the present? We can take you off the drugs and–’

‘Off the drugs?’ Darla asked. ‘Maybe I wanna keep using, ever thought about that? My family is here!’

The mother took a step forward. ‘Darla,’ she said. ‘Come with us, please…’

‘No! Never!’ Darla said and put the barrel of the gun to her right temple. ‘Fuck you all!’

In a matter of milliseconds the blood and brain matter splattered all over the gray, yellow-stained wall. Darla, with the gun still secured in her hand, fell listlessly to the ground and stared with a dead, empty gaze at her father.

Abstract expressionism, Oliver thought as he beheld his child’s scarlet sanguine fluid dribbling down the wall.

‘Oh my God, Darla! No! No!’ Lynette screamed as she ran to her now late daughter. She knelt right by her and held up her head, from which her blood-stained hair was languidly hanging.

Oliver snorted. ‘Told ya it’d be a waste of my fucking time,’ he said, turned around, and headed toward the exit of that ramshackle ruin of a building.

END OF CHAPTER 6

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Chapter 5

To Serve and Protect

It took less than an hour for the street in front of Oliver Morneau’s apartment to be swarmed with squad cars and an ambulance that were frantically and continuously flashing beacons of red and blue light. Oliver had changed his clothes and now sat in one of the armchairs in the living room, staring at the wooden floor and expecting the doorbell to ring any minute. He was no fool; he knew it was just a matter of time before the police would come to ask him about the woman in front of his building. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, but he did scold himself mentally for the manner in which he had deprived that waste-of-space of her life or health. He should have done it the way Gregory Raff had – he should have lured her inside his apartment and then disposed of her body in a much more clandestine fashion, without attracting the cops’ attention, which he could definitely do without. Raff was a crazy son of a bitch, Morneau had no doubt about that, but he knew how to act professionally when it came to his victims.

And there it was, that sharp and earsplitting rrrring! A second or two later, just when Oliver was about to stand up, he heard a loud bang on the door. He frowned and tilted his head; he couldn’t explain to himself the strange simultaneity of those two sounds he so much despised. Both of them represented people wanting to wander into and disrupt his neatly organized life. He had to get outside, so he figured he could open the door just as well.

In the doorway stood Mrs. Sullivan; Oliver would never have mistaken her noble, elegant figure or her flaming, ember hair styled in a classy, feathered bob for anyone else. She was about a decade his junior, which normally would make her instantly uninteresting to Morneau, but she had that alluring something about her that didn’t seem to have withered with time, and it made Oliver want her every time he saw her. That sensation, however, always passed whenever she opened her mouth, for her speech was usually crass, churlish, and had something so unrefined about it that he wished he could just push her down the stairs each time they happened to exchange a word or two on the floor he lived on.

‘Mr. Morneau! You’re home!’ she screamed in his face with the thickest Auburn Heights accent if there ever was one.

Obviously, he thought and said nothing.

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed the police outside but some fuckin’ schmuck killed a woman right in front of our door! Kowalski told me he saw a dead woman bleedin’ like a slaughtered pig on the sidewalk when we came back and I was like, Are you effin’ kiddin’ me? I mean, who does that? We got outta the car and called the cops right away. Anyway, they wanna talk to you. You’ve probably heard the doorbell already – it’s them. They’re waitin’ outside. A coupla detectives.’ She inhaled as if to fire another hail of words at him but stopped herself from doing that and instead just turned around, headed downstairs, and briskly added, ‘You better go see ’em now.’

A million thoughts passed through Oliver’s head on his way to see the police. He was mad as hell at himself, just as he was at others, for disturbing his peace. But even though they were nothing more to him than scum in their human, biological form, they did represent authority that he was by law subjected to, after all; they were placed higher in the dominance hierarchy that was generally accepted by the vast majority of his fellow compatriots, so there was nothing else he could do but to play ball. He put on a disarming smile when he noticed the two men standing near where he had kicked that woman whose name he couldn’t for the life of him remember.

The first detective, who wore a dark brown suit, was visibly overweight, his belly threatening to fire the buttons that did the grueling work of keeping his shirt together. He had a warm skin tone. His black hair, although thick, was receding, and his face was adorned with a graying, neatly-trimmed mustache. The other one gave off a much more powerful impression – he had a strong jaw and a sharp, unflinching blue stare. He stood firmly with spread legs, his hands on his hips. He looked like someone who visited the gym regularly, although he did seem to be only slightly younger than Oliver. His suit was gray, but it was probably not more expensive than any of the ones he owned.

‘Good evening,’ said the gray suit. ‘Are you Oliver Morneau? Do you live here?’

‘Yes and yes,’ he said with the smile still present on his loose physiognomy. ‘How can I help?’

The gray suit spoke again. ‘Lieutenant George Wurlitzer. This is Sergeant Luis Ramirez. Dillon PD.’ They showed their badges. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’ He pulled out his legal pad and prepared his pen to catch anything important.

‘Sure,’ Oliver said and put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘Shoot.’

They darted a quick glance at him.

‘I mean, please.’

‘You rent an apartment in this building?’ Wurlitzer asked.

‘No. I own it.’

‘All right. Where were you at approximately seven p.m.?’

‘I was here,’ Oliver said and swallowed his saliva. ‘In my apartment.’

‘Did you hear or see anything suspicious or unusual around that time? Anything out of the ordinary that caught your attention?’

Oliver pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Not that I’m aware of. No.’

Ramirez took a small step forward and asked in a firm and baritone voice, ‘Sir. You mean to tell us that a woman was brutally assaulted right outside your home and you didn’t see or hear a thing?’

A brisk nod. ‘That’s right, Sergeant.’

‘Nothing at all?’ Wurlitzer said.

‘Zilch. I must have been pretty immersed in my work, you know.’

‘Your work?’ Wurlitzer asked. ‘What kind of work?’

‘I’m, uh, I’m a photographer. I was working on some pictures for an upcoming exhibition at the time you mentioned.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Wurlitzer wrote something down. ‘And can you prove that in any way?’

‘I think I could. I can grab my laptop, show you the file properties from today.’

The detectives glanced at each other and Wurlitzer told Oliver to hurry up.

Oliver was back in less than a minute. He knew he needed proof of his innocence and had therefore decided to copy the pictures from his camera onto his computer. He was clean and they could kiss his ass. He showed them the properties of his newly created files, which confirmed his story.

‘George,’ Ramirez said. ‘Could I talk to you for a second?’

‘Yeah,’ Wurlitzer answered and then said to Oliver, ‘please stay where you are, sir.’

Oliver nodded in forced obedience. He wanted so much to punch that douche and knock his fucking teeth in.

‘Listen, George,’ Ramirez said in an attempted but failed whisper. Oliver could hear everything they said. ‘I recognize this guy now. He’s Oliver Morneau, the photographer. I don’t get them, but Camilla loves his photos. She’s a huge fan. Anyway, what I’m saying is: if he’s saying he worked on those pics, and he showed us he did, I believe him.’

Wurlitzer didn’t say anything. He just looked off into the distance and nodded in response.

They approached Oliver, and Wurlitzer asked, ‘Can I see the date on those pictures again?’

‘Sure thing, Lieutenant,’ Oliver said and showed the detective what he wanted to see.

Ramirez looked at his partner in anticipation. Wurlitzer looked the other way, licked his lower lip, and nodded, as if defeated in an argument he was trying hard to win. ‘Fair enough,’ he said, put his legal pad back into his pocket, and fished out a piece of paper he handed to Oliver. ‘Look, if you remember anything, and I mean anything at all, don’t hesitate to give me a call, all right?’

‘Yes, sir. Will do.’

‘Okay, that’s all from us,’ Wurlitzer said and walked off.

Ramirez added, ‘Thank you for your cooperation, sir. You’re free to go. Have a good night.’

‘Good night! Glad I could help!’ Oliver said in a louder voice, trying to reach Wurlitzer’s hearing, but the detective was already talking to a uniform across the street. He closed his laptop and went upstairs.

Once he entered his apartment again, he locked the door, went into the bedroom, put the laptop back on the desk in the corner, and threw himself on the bed where he curled up into a fetal position. He felt the urge to suck on his thumb but managed to resist it by crossing his arms and embracing his chest. His heart raced so fast, he could feel it in his throat.

He almost got caught. He had spoken to people who could confine him in a small room made of thick, concrete walls where he would be raped and humiliated for the rest of his miserable life. People would think of him as a psycho; they would think he was like that Gregory Raff, with his crazy stare and sick photos. He would lose all prestige and credibility in the public’s eye. And Mariella would suck Jake’s cock in the meantime… Oh, how he detested that begging old bitch! Hated her with the fire of a thousand nukes! First, she fucked with his creative flow and then she almost got him into prison! She was lucky the paramedics took her to the hospital, he thought, for he felt like going back downstairs to hack her weak body into small pieces for the mess she had put him in!

‘Slow down, Oliver. Slow down,’ he whispered to himself, ‘You don’t want to die from a heart attack. Not because of that stupid whore. No, no, no. Forget about her.’

The heart palpitations began to fade eventually, and Oliver rocked himself to sleep. Only to wake up, after hours steeped in oppressive nightmares, to news he neither wanted nor was remotely equipped to receive.

END OF CHAPTER 5

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Chapter 4

A Devoted Fan

It was almost two in the morning when Oliver Morneau fell asleep again and therefore woke up much later than he usually did; the clock on his phone was about to turn its small numbers to show noon.

He rubbed his eyes and went directly to the kitchen where he made himself a cup of instant coffee, opened a new pack of Marlboros, lit one, and seated himself at the table.

As he puffed on his cigarette, he couldn’t help but think about what had happened last night, how Mariella and that handsome bastard had treated him in front of everybody. What right did they have to make fun of his age? Who gave them the authority to decide that being older necessarily meant being at a disadvantage? And then she had the temerity to spread her legs for that little shit? He let out the smoke, this time much longer, when his mind took another turn – why did he care if she fucked someone else, Oliver asked himself. He was not her husband, and she didn’t have any obligation whatsoever to stay faithful or limit herself solely to him. Truth be told, he was lucky that she even wanted to keep seeing and screwing an old prick like him. Old… That word reminded him of his greatest fear, that he would only get older with time and that Mariella would sooner rather than later lose the slightest interest in him.

There must be a way to keep her forever to myself, he thought as he lit another cigarette.

The first solution that came to his mind revolved around radical measures like killing her or imprisoning her, but after doing a bit of soul-searching, he concluded that he would be unable to do that, at least to her. He somehow liked that lying, opportunistic slut and didn’t want to harm her in any way, shape, or form. Besides, such ideas could easily backfire and leave him rotting inside a prison cell, consequently defeating their own purpose.

And then an outlandish idea started to form in his head: maybe he could marry her? It was a possibility. No one promised him that she would agree to become his wife, but it was at least a reasonable idea. If she agreed, she would be a faithful wife and never cheat on him again. Just as he was putting out another cigarette (he had lost count by now, but almost half of the new pack was gone) and finishing his coffee, he decided that he would give it a try. He placed his interlaced fingers on the table while a frown appeared above his vacant, baggy eyes. In order to implement his plan, he would have to go to a jewelry store and buy an engagement ring. But not just any jewelry store. It would have to be one downtown; he would tell her that he’d bought the ring in the heart of the city – she would most definitely appreciate it much more then, Oliver was sure.

He quickly did the math. It would take him approximately an hour to get downtown from where he lived by subway. Upper downtown would be good enough, too. His jaw dropped when he looked at the clock hanging on one of the kitchen walls. He didn’t even notice that he’d been sitting like that for a few hours. It was three in the afternoon already! If he hurried up, he would make the three-thirty train.

He got to the station just as the train pulled in. The view was a common one; most people were looking down, either at a book, at their cellphones or tablets, or just the dirty ground (someone’s shoes even managed to smuggle in some brown and red leaves here and there). There was also one gentleman who sat on the other side of the train and who kept staring at Oliver with a somewhat mirthless, almost mocking smile. The nameless watcher was a man with such pale skin that it was almost transparent, exposing the complex network of blue veins that ran up and down his hands. He was balding, but the hair that was left on his head was very wavy, curly essentially, of a rather dark color. He was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater beneath a brown leather jacket. Pretty neat overall, Oliver had no doubt about it, but despite his fancy attire, he had a detectable air of lunacy about him. What struck him most, however, were the man’s eyes; he had the most penetrating gaze Oliver had yet seen, even though his eyes were pitch black.

Morneau noticed him right away but pretended not to be bothered by the stranger’s egregious discourtesy. He spent the rest of the torturous journey looking at the shoes of the passengers seated in front of him.

Oliver got off at Harrison Village. He took out his phone to verify where it was he had to go, for there were about four jewelry stores in that particular area. Before he could make up his mind about which one to choose first, he heard a raspy and shrill voice exploding in his left ear.

‘I know who you are!’

Oliver jumped to the side and turned around to take a better look at the auditory assailant. He wasn’t surprised – it was the man who had grilled him on the train. He looked the man up and down and said, ‘Is that so?’

The eerie grin refused to disappear from the stranger’s face. ‘Of course. You are Oliver Morneau, one of the greatest photographers alive!’

Oliver’s initial reaction of revulsion now gave way to something much more pleasing. He was actually surprised that someone would recognize him, especially in this part of the city. He was considering whether he should be mad at the man for his rude behavior, after all. Maybe he was just admiring him, recognizing his superiority among the gray mass of boring people present on the train. The man had just turned him into a celebrity among the philistine masses. ‘Yes. That would be me,’ Morneau said. ‘And you are?’

‘I’m Gregory Raff,’ the man said in a firm voice and shook Oliver’s hand in like manner.

‘So. What do you want?’ He was now more than willing to listen to what this intriguing stranger had to say to him.

Raff spoke quickly. ‘Well, I’m somewhat of a photographer myself. At, at least it’s a big hobby of mine, photography is, and I’d very much like to turn it into a full-time profession. And now that I’ve met you, and what an incredible coincidence this is, I, I wondered whether you could do me the honor of visiting me at my apartment to take a brief look at my pictures and give me some advice on what to work on, what, what to improve in them, you know?’

Had he wanted just an autograph, Oliver would have been completely fine with that, but walking into Gregory’s home, wasting hours upon hours analyzing some pictures that were probably shit anyway, was a bit too much to accept. A sigh escaped Oliver’s lips.

‘Look, I’m kind of in a rush, all right? Maybe you could–’

‘I promise you, Mr. Morneau, it won’t take more than a few minutes. I swear!’ Gregory Raff said hastily, almost tapping Oliver on his chest with both of his hands.

Oliver looked at his watch and calculated quickly, perhaps even too quickly, that he’d still be able to get to a jewelry store before closing time. He scowled, for under these circumstances, Oliver truly didn’t know how he could deny Gregory’s request.

‘Okay, Mr. Raff. But let’s make it quick.’

‘Excellent! Follow me,’ Raff said, and they both left the station.

And so, without exchanging a word, they walked northward for some ten minutes until they reached and entered a red-brick apartment building. The apartment itself was so small and crammed with an indistinguishable mass of stuff upon stuff, it was challenging to just set foot on the floor without stepping on something. The blinds were almost closed shut, successfully keeping any traces of the setting sun away, which, in turn, created a gathering darkness that made everything gradually impossible to see, had it not been for the sliver of light escaping from what seemed to be the kitchen. The smell was something that irritated Oliver’s olfaction the most; it was an acrid mixture of waste and old meat, if he had to name it anything.

Gregory Raff tossed his brown leather jacket into a random corner of the living room, and gestured with his long arm to the torn, worn-out couch situated in the middle of the room. ‘Please, sit, Mr. Morneau.’

Morneau thanked him and waited until Raff turned around, for the couch was covered in porno magazines he would never dare to touch with his bare hands. When Raff finally turned his back on him for a second or two, Oliver kicked some of them off the couch and onto the floor so that he would have a place to sit without having to worry that something would later stick to his pants. The reason Gregory Raff turned around was his searching the cupboard by his knees for the album into which he glued all the pictures he had made in the recent and not-so-recent past. It took him about a minute before he finally found it and pulled it out.

‘Finally got that son of a bitch!’ Raff growled as he made his way around the couch to sit next to Oliver. The host didn’t care to put the magazines on his side of the couch away and instead just sat on them as if they were the proper decoration for his undersized apartment.

The album was a square-shaped book made of a suede-like fabric. When Gregory opened it to the first page, Oliver felt his blood pressure almost destroy all the veins in his neck and around his eyes. All of the pictures in the album showed murdered, naked women lying on a plastic sheet spread across the floor. Some of them were lucky enough to have had just their throats cut. Others were without their heads. The most unfortunate were the ones that were gagged, with a leg, an arm, or a breast cut off; the horror in their eyes as they stared into the camera’s lens was something so bloodcurdling that it defied Oliver’s capacity to move. Total paralysis defined his whole body until Gregory started talking again. It had all happened right here, in this very apartment – Oliver could tell by the outdated furniture.

‘And? What do you think?’ Raff asked as he smiled and rubbed his hands together. ‘Those are basically all the women I had sex with,’ he said in a proud voice. ‘I lured them into this cozy little apartment of mine, had my way with them, and then did… what you can see here. Those stupid broads thought I was some super-rich hotshot or something. Anyway, I wanted your opinion on the photos. So, how do you think I could improve them?’

Never before had Oliver found it that difficult to speak, to utter any word. He swallowed the excess saliva that in the meantime had accumulated in his mouth and tried to feed the guy some bullshit about just any technicalities, such as focus or the golden ratio. Gregory listened intently and nodded at every other word Oliver said, whereas all the guest was trying to do was play the host’s game so that he wouldn’t get himself killed by that ruthless psycho.

When they were somewhere in the middle of that malicious album, Oliver, with his forehead covered in beads of sweat, almost jumped out of his own skin at the abrupt sound of a small but deafening alarm clock going off.

Gregory reached for the small device and turned it off. He then got up, smiled at his guest, bowing ever so slightly, and excused himself, saying he had to go to the bathroom for just a minute and that he’d be right back. But before he left his guest, he went to the other end of the room and opened a drawer, out of which he took a rusty pair of pliers. With the tool in hand, he disappeared into the bathroom and locked himself inside. Oliver had no idea why anyone would take a pair of pliers with them to the bathroom unless they wanted to fix a broken faucet. Could it have been something so urgent as to abandon the guest he’d just invited? Oliver stood up gingerly and made his way to the bathroom door to listen in on what was going on inside. The sounds were muffled, but he could still make out Gregory’s unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. There was a deep silence for about five seconds before Oliver was suddenly taken aback by an agonizing shriek Raff attempted to suppress.

Oliver almost fell on his ass but managed to restore his equilibrium at the last second before landing on the dirty floor where so many women had died. He didn’t have an inkling of what was going on in that bathroom but he knew one thing: this was his opportunity to get the hell out of that sick and twisted man’s world.

Oliver was almost out of breath when he reached the first jewelry store and saw that, to his bitter disappointment, it was closed. He took a look at his watch, then covered his face with his hands as he cursed himself for getting lured into that basket case’s apartment and losing so much time there. After he found the third jewelry store to be already closed as well, his internal rage reached an unprecedented high. His plans hadn’t come to fruition because of his laziness and his naivety; as much as he was impressed by Gregory Raff’s ability to mercilessly kill all those women, and thankful for having recognized his superiority at the station, he hated that sick fuck for wasting so much of his valuable time.

Now that all of his plans had gone to shit and with nothing left to do, especially at such a late hour, he decided to head back home and work on some ideas for his upcoming exhibition.

Seven post meridiem. Darkness had settled over the city.

When Oliver got home, he noticed a note attached to his apartment door saying that Mrs. Sullivan was out with Mr. Kowalski to visit her husband’s grave and that they were then going to do some shopping at one of those twenty-four-hour grocery stores, which could take a bit of time. That would explain the lack of any light on the first-floor windows, he thought, but other than that he didn’t give a damn. He crumpled the piece of paper and threw it downstairs.

In his apartment, Oliver tried to keep himself busy by taking pictures of random objects put in places they didn’t belong, like a toothbrush in a toilet bowl, a manual razor with colorful toothpaste on it, Mariella’s dildo placed in the phone’s charging base. She had brought it once with her, but forgotten to take it back ever since.

‘Fuck!’ he screamed as he heard someone ringing the doorbell. How many more times would he have to be terrorized by loud and unexpected sounds that day?

He ran headlong downstairs, opened the door, and yelled ‘What?’ at the woman’s face. How did she dare to disrupt his creative flow in such an important moment?

The woman in question, who seemed to be in her sixties, was dressed in a long, blue jacket. She had short, black hair and was of a fragile physique. She was holding a can with a small opening on top.

‘Good evening. M-my name is Lydia Mifflin. I, I’m… I’m terribly sorry to bother you, sir, but–’

‘But what?’ Oliver said after taking a step forward.

‘I, uh, well, I w-was wuh-wondering whether you’d be interested in helping little Philip,’ she said and took out a photo of the little boy to show Oliver. ‘He’s, he’s suffering from cerebral palsy and is in dire need of literally any financial support he can get so that we can pay for his physical therapy sessions, and–’

‘How much?’ Morneau asked.

‘And, uh, pardon?’ Lydia asked, her train of thought totally derailed by the interruption.

‘How much do you need from me?’ the photographer specified, his voice much lower and raspier this time.

‘Why, sir, I would appreciate every single penny, but it’s not up to me to decide, really, so…’

Oliver fished out his wallet, which he still had in the back pocket of his pants, opened it, and threw all the cash he intended to spend on the engagement ring at the frail and timid woman. Lydia was flabbergasted by the amount of bills flying in the air and landing gracefully on the sidewalk.

‘There!’ Oliver screamed. ‘Take it! Take all of my damn money. Go ahead!’

Lydia got down on her knees and didn’t hesitate to collect all the banknotes she could and put them inside the can, all the while Oliver continued his indignant rant.

‘Go on, yeah! Take it! Take all of it, you naggy fucking parasite!’ he yelled from the top of his lungs when he suddenly swung his leg and kicked Lydia with all the strength he could muster in the chin. She flew back a foot or two and immediately went into violent convulsions. Foam was pouring frantically out of her mouth and her eyes rolled stubbornly back, exposing the noticeably veined whites. Some of her teeth lay next to her nose in a pool of blood and vomit that had started to form just beneath her lips on the raspy sidewalk.

Oliver scowled at the sight he described in his mind as offensive. That, however, didn’t prevent him from collecting the bills that had not been affected by Lydia’s bodily fluids.

‘Fucking freeloader.’ He spat at her one last time and went back to his apartment to continue working on his photos. He sure as hell hoped she was the last one to interrupt him that night. But the night wasn’t finished with him.

END OF CHAPTER 4

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Chapter 3

Humiliation

No matter how adamant he was about going with Mariella to that enigmatic party she had mentioned, Oliver still had his worries connected with the mysterious event. How many people would be there? Would he meet someone his age there, or would there be only people who could pass for his children? He didn’t want to end up looking like everybody’s drunk uncle, sitting by the hearth and recounting stories from the days of yore to the younger generation. And he didn’t want to look upon them as his pupils, either. And that was why he dreaded the party so much, and he dreaded it all day long. At best, he hoped some kind of anonymous orgy would ensue, where everybody could fuck anybody without any limits, restraints, or boundaries. But this hopeful vision was soon suppressed by his timidity about the appearance of his penis. Maybe it didn’t look that ugly, nor was it tremendously different from those of other men, but it did suffer from a number of aggressions in the past, most of which he owed to his mother.

As far back as he could remember, Oliver had been abused by Susan Morneau, née Hamming, in one form or another. Not long after Henry Morneau’s death, little Oliver discovered his father’s old camera inside one of the boxes in the attic. He went to that particular part of the house quite a lot since it was the last place where he’d seen his father. He did not attend the funeral; his mother had forbidden it, and so he stayed home with Aunt Emilie, Susan’s cousin, who taught him how to use this curious picture-taking device. Oliver had used it ever since to take photos whenever he and his mother would go on a trip, which didn’t happen very often. However, the infrequency of their travels was not something Oliver lamented, for every time they did, his mother did her best to humiliate him, preferably with other people witnessing his degradation. He still remembered how everyone around him laughed when she had spanked his bare bottom in a mall while they were visiting Oxenburgh, where Susan was to see a certain man her son didn’t know all that well, a man who paid her for spending time together, which little Oliver had to listen to every night through the thin walls of that man’s cramped apartment. What confused him most was that with every spank that left his face covered in snot and tears, Susan said that she did this because she loved him. That was one of his earliest memories.

About two years later, there occurred something that left Oliver friendless for the rest of elementary school. At one point, his education did not come easily to him and he began to fall behind. His grades reached an all-time low, largely due to his father’s death. His teacher, Mrs. Mullican, told Oliver that she would like to talk to his mother about his struggles. Susan was meant to come after class to discuss her son’s grades in private, but the widow – as was her custom – wasn’t interested in any preordained rules and appeared in the classroom mid-lesson. The teacher, though taken aback by Susan’s brashness, suggested they step into the hallway to discuss the boy’s grades away from the other students. Susan refused, insisting they speak right there, at Mrs. Mullican’s desk, because she had somewhere important to be and no time to walk around. Mrs. Mullican offered an awkward smile and agreed. She spoke as quietly and as discreetly as possible, while Susan replied loudly and bluntly, countering every remark the teacher made. “Look,” she snapped, “it’s not that he’s going through a difficult phase, Mrs. Mullican. He is, simply put, lazy! He doesn’t help me around the house, either! He doesn’t even take care of himself! You can get a whiff of him if you want – he reeks!” Oliver’s classmates were struggling to suppress their laughter. “And his room?” she continued, as if emboldened by her own bravado. “Oh, don’t even ask! Last time I went in there, I found cat shit smeared all over his bed! And he still sleeps in that litter box like it’s nothing!” That was too much. The children’s restraint collapsed into merciless laughter. From that day on, Oliver was known as Catshit, a nickname that made any attempt at friendship futile.

But the true horrors begun once he entered adolescence. Susan was a woman who had always had numerous female friends, many of whom she invited home (by that time, she and Oliver had moved to a small apartment with a colony of rats living under the floorboards). The first time it happened, Oliver was twelve years old. Susan called him, ordered him to stand in the middle of the living room, and to undress in front of her and three of her friends. He obeyed eagerly, hoping that his compliance would be rewarded by his mother telling him where the grave of his father was. Once he stood there naked, Susan would ridicule his body, criticizing it for developing toward manhood, becoming more manlike with every passing day. Many a time the guests would be told by the host to provoke the poor boy by spreading their legs or fondling their breasts in front of his face to evoke even the slightest trace of arousal in him. Whenever it happened and the inevitable consequences followed, his mother would immediately take the pot of nearly boiling tea or coffee prepared for the guests and throw some of its contents onto his erect organ, making sure to let him know what a “dirty and downright disgusting little male shit” he was, then warning him never again to disrespect her friends in such a nasty manner, as if he didn’t know how ladies were to be treated! This happened a few times a year until Oliver was sixteen. By then, his mother had successfully conditioned him to lose his ability to have an erection, no matter how obscene Susan’s friends’ gestures were. The next time he managed to have one again was only at twenty-seven, when he met his now ex-wife, Lynnette.

However, before meeting Lynnette, he had no friends and no maternal support, and so he spent most of his free time away from home, searching for his father’s burial place and taking pictures with his old camera of the simplest things that caught his attention on the streets of his neighborhood, South Belmont, where he developed a growing interest in photography, which became a refuge from the terrors of every-day life.

Another thing Oliver Morneau had developed was a deep sense of shame regarding his genitals, for the skin was visibly burned after all the assaults committed by his mother. Even when he screwed Mariella, he initially preferred doing it at night, with the lights out. Only after three or maybe four months did he build up the courage to stand naked in front of her. She admitted it didn’t look pretty, but that wasn’t that important to her. What was important, she said, was how it felt inside of her, and she couldn’t complain about that. But did she tell him the truth or was she just fulfilling her role as his personal brown-nose? That, he would never know for sure.

His diachronic ruminations were interrupted by the vibration of his phone. It was Saturday, 6 p.m., and he had been home all day, so he didn’t expect any calls or messages unless they came from Mariella. So he ran from his bed to the table in the living room, where he had left the phone, to check whether it was his lover calling him about the party. He unlocked the screen and saw a notification telling him he’d received an email. He didn’t recognize the sender’s name and, assuming it was spam, opened the message to delete it as fast as possible. It turned out to be from Lynette. She wanted to see him. It was supposed to be urgent and of utmost importance, and about something she couldn’t discuss over the phone. So there was no point in calling her back, he figured.

Oliver sighed. After their divorce, which occurred when he was in his late twenties, she moved back to her parents’ house in that far-flung city of Hastings. No way he was going to fly over there, he wrote back to her. If she wanted to talk to him, she’d better take her ass to Dillon, or she could forget about the whole thing. He wondered how in the world she had gotten his email address in the first place.

Oliver hadn’t yet put the phone back on the table when it rang again, this time without stopping. He looked at the screen and saw Mariella’s name filling it. He swiped up and put the phone to his ear.

‘Yes,’ was all Oliver said in greeting.

‘You’re ready?’ she asked, her voice ever so amicable.

‘I was born ready.’

‘Great! I’ll give you a call when I’m out front. See ya in a sec!’

And so, after receiving the second phone call, he dressed in gray jeans, a black sweater, and black leather shoes, wrapped a dark gray melange scarf around his neck, and put on his other coat, a black one. This time, he had also decided to wear a different pair of glasses – black brow-line frames. He locked the door, went slowly downstairs (so as not to sweat too much), and stopped just short of the curb. Mariella was nowhere to be seen. Oliver used this time to have one last cigarette before the big event, which wouldn’t be that big if he hadn’t inflated it to its current size inside his own head.

It was dark, even for night. As he puffed on his cigarette, his eyes flicked to the two buildings pressed together across the street. The taller one was just another undistinguished apartment building, although much taller than the one he lived in. The one to the left belonged to Eric Chen, with the words VETERINARY SERVICES slapped in big letters on a sign hanging over the entrance.

With the break-ins becoming far too frequent, Eric Chen had been forced to install security cameras as addicts forced their way inside, convinced they’d find anything injectable, swallowable, capable of hitting them hard. Chen doubted the surveillance would help, but to his surprise, it did. The bullets, batons, and handcuffs proved it. The intrusions slowed, then stopped altogether.

When the taxi pulled up in front of Oliver, the door swung open as if by itself, and he could hear Mariella’s unmistakable voice coming from inside the car.

‘Hop in!’

He was reluctant at first, but then finally scrambled into the backseat.

The party hadn’t even begun yet and Oliver was already furious. If he had known Mariella wanted to pick him up in a cab, then he would have called Carlos and told him to pick the both of them up. But how could he explain this to her? Where would he even start? She would never understand the impression the Brazilian driver had made on him. Hell, he couldn’t even fully fathom it himself, so how on earth could he tell Mariella about it? He decided to sit quietly and observe the streets through the window.

‘You’re so silent…’

A minuscule nod was Oliver’s only answer to Mariella’s remark.

‘Aren’t you looking forward to the party?’ she asked, her face devoid of any emotion.

Oliver let out a deep sigh before he said, ‘The party. I don’t even know the first thing about it. Who’s hosting it? Who will be there? You haven’t told me anything.’

‘Well, it’s just a regular party, pumpkin. I don’t know much about it, either.’

‘But you have to know something,’ Oliver said, still looking out the window at the passing buildings and people. One of them was a woman dressed in a thick fur coat who was walking her dog. Poor guy must have lived in constant fear that one day it would be him who’d end up as her next garment, he thought.

‘All I know is that John will be there and he told me to come.’

‘John?’ he asked. ‘John Kinzel?’

‘Yeah, is that bad? I thought you guys were friends,’ Mariella said.

Morneau merely shot her a glance before turning his face back toward the window. ‘We are.’

That wasn’t such bad news. At least there would be someone he knew. He wouldn’t have to force himself on people he didn’t give a rat’s ass about.

Oliver generally hated the concept of a party, of that particular type of gathering. There were always lots of drunk people who seemed so happy-go-lucky, as if there were no tomorrow. Whenever he saw a smile on someone’s face, he became instantly overwhelmed by the desire to take some kind of knife and eviscerate them. See if they’d be so happy then, those smug fucks.

It took them about fifteen to twenty minutes to arrive at… Oliver didn’t have the slightest idea where they were, but he suspected it was somewhere in South Belmont or East Muiden.

They entered a tall apartment building painted red. The party took place on the first floor. The place was small and that was what made it look so packed. Many were walking, constantly on the move, wandering from one room to another. Some stood still – a group of people here, another cluster of persons there – anonymous heads opening and closing their mouths at the speed of light, creating a collective clamor so unbearable that Oliver couldn’t hear his own thoughts. He didn’t have to wait long for John Kinzel to catch up with him, but only to say goodbye. Looking at the drunk woman at his friend’s side, Oliver knew right away what the reason for his departure was.

Great, he thought. Now he was alone in this swarm of strangers, for Mariella was quick to leave him as soon as they had passed the door’s threshold in order to run to her female friends, who were forming a bevy of boisterous young ladies in the kitchenette on the other side of the apartment. He detested her for doing that to him, leaving him abandoned and just so isolated. No one knew the great Oliver Morneau here. He was old, strikingly different, and completely unrecognizable. A caricature, a satire of a human being stuck among the small multitude consisting of lively people in the prime of their youth. He’d spent less than five minutes at this social gathering, but he already had more than enough of it. He wanted, nay, needed to leave, but he knew that if he did so, Mariella wouldn’t be so quick to forgive him this time. For whatever reason, she needed him there, and he had to abide by her unspoken plea to remain.

Since he had nowhere to run for now, he decided to head to the small table in the center of the room, on which all the available beverages were placed, and pour himself half a glass of wine. He opted for the French semi-dry white wine. He hated the taste of it, but at least it made him look more elegant and distinguished. A beer bottle would have made him look even more like Mariella’s dad, he figured. He stood there for a few seconds until more people came up to the table to refill their glasses. Oliver understood that he was standing in their way and moved to the corner near a parlor palm growing out of a knee-high black pot.

It seemed that no one even noticed him standing in that dark corner (for the apartment was only partially illuminated). He had no idea what all the groups of people were so vigorously discussing. He could only catch one conversation; some guy in his late twenties was rambling on about how important it was to take appropriate action on social media platforms against the transgressions of the indifferent South American presidents and their blindness to the growing poaching of endangered species in the Amazon rainforest. Oliver only snorted as inconspicuously as he could at that comment. What did he care about animals? The last time he’d had an animal, he had drowned the newborn kitten in a plastic barrel filled with rainwater when he was nine years old.

After a while Mariella had finally left her friends and approached him.

‘Oliver, what are you doing?’ she asked, tipsy by now. ‘You look like some sort of security guard standing like that. Don’t you want to talk to someone in here?’

‘No, no,’ Oliver said and raised his open hand ever so slightly, as if to calm his lover’s worries. ‘I’m fine here. Just fine.’

Mariella took his right forearm into her grip and tried to pull him away from the parlor palm. Oliver could have killed her right there for making a clown of him in front of everybody present, but he silently resisted, offering nothing but a smirk while standing his ground. She wasn’t his mother, and he was not her son. She had no right to pull him around like that!

This would have continued longer if it weren’t for a voice from the midst of the partygoers that called Mariella’s name. The stand-off had ceased and both of them looked at the crowd, trying to discern who it was that called out to the photographer’s lover. Not long after her name had sounded, a young man with medium-length brown hair emerged from somewhere among the people standing in the middle of the apartment. Oliver didn’t know the young man, but was flabbergasted when he noticed what he was wearing – a green military jacket with a white star on the chest. The last time he had seen it was when he had worn it in that hunting store not far from where he lived.

The young man looked to be in his early thirties. He was already drunk and hugged Mariella with a beer bottle in his right hand and a cigarette in the other.

‘Mariella! Long time no see! Lookin’ pretty hot in that outfit, baby!’ he said in an insistent manner as his gaze followed her every curve. It was full of lust and fury.

‘Hi,’ Mariella said, her smile stiffening, then softening when she looked over at Oliver, who was clearly awaiting an answer from her. ‘Oliver, this is, uh, Jake Rakowski.’

Oliver looked at her with large eyes and asked in a half-whisper, ‘And who the hell is Jake Rakowski?’ all the while Jake shamelessly kept his eyes on her from behind, biting his lower lip.

If ever asked, even if confronted by the most ruthless authorities in a life-and-death situation, Mariella would never have told anybody the true reason why she hadn’t thrown Jake out of her life for good.

Mariella had come to Dillon all the way from Dexter with the intention of becoming a model. Too beautiful and too proud to work in her parents’ business, modelling was the sole purpose of her staying in the metropolis. She was sure to always send her portfolio (which consisted of nothing more than a couple of photos with minimal makeup and some brief information about her having won a beauty contest in high school) to different agencies, but since she hadn’t done any prior professional modeling, none of them bothered to answer her. The lack of experience made her simply indistinguishable from countless other hopefuls, and so they moved on. But Mariella was no dummy either, and knew that in order to survive she had to find a job, and so she had. She worked as a waitress at a bar in the northern part of the neighborhood of Huntington, but soon did the same job somewhere else, this time in South Belmont, since the rent turned out to be cheaper by a few hundred dollars. What had led her to this change was her having found an ad, in which the potential roommate offered to split the cost. The announcement was just what she needed and was quick to call the author of it, telling him that she’d be interested.

And that’s where all the trouble had begun.

The roommate turned out to be twenty-six-year-old Jake Rakowski. Jake had migrated to Dillon from the far outskirts of Gitigan, a much smaller city about a hundred miles south. The reason for this venture was that he’d been in a fight with a guy two years his senior, Thomas Ryland, over a spilled beer; a fight that ended up with the latter having both of his knees viciously broken by the young huntsman. Thomas’s parents had been friends with Jake’s parents since forever and therefore decided, after a long and persuasive talk with their firstborn, not to press charges. At first Jake thought he was off the hook, but then soon noticed that because of what he’d done, there would be no future for him in Gitigan, professionally and socially. And so, with no job and no more friends, like Cain after killing his brother, Jake decided to go and settle in a city that was as far away from his hometown as the biblical land of Nod. He came from a family in which deer hunting was considered a sacred tradition. He knew all about the activity and that was why he landed the job at Sabertooth with such ease.

The hobbyist artist that she was, Mariella loved to spend her free time drawing. She once left a drawing depicting a sunset on the table in their kitchen, which Jake immediately noticed. He said that it made him cry because it reminded him of his last day with his ex before she died of brain cancer. Mariella was so moved by his story and this incredible incident of almost cosmic dimensions that she embraced her roommate, held him tight, and expressed how sorry she was for bringing back such horrible memories. Their proximity soon released in them a fire they both had never known, and before long they ended up together in bed, where Mariella claimed to have lost her virginity. When Jake found that out, he declared his love for her and told her how honored he was by the fact that she chose him to deflower her. Mariella was quick to reciprocate her love, and so the roommates became a couple.

Jake, however, knew nothing of her plans to become a model, and when she told him that she had just sent her pictures to an agency in the hope of getting noticed, he slapped her across the face with the back of his hand and, shouting from the top of his lungs, asked how she dared to do such an abominable thing. She was his woman, he said, and no one had the right to look at her body, which was now his body. “Imagine how many perverts would use your pictures to jerk off if they saw you in one of those magazines!” was his main line of defense. Mariella understood his jealousy, but tried to convince him that she would always behave professionally and that she’d never do something that would humiliate him. In response, Jake drew out his handgun and placed the barrel of it against her temple, saying very slowly that her body belonged only to him and that if she ever tried to send her pictures to an agency again, he would not hesitate to pull the trigger. When Jake finished his little speech, Mariella’s face was streaked with tears, and her legs soaked in warm urine. She promised him she’d never do it again and would stick to her job at the bar.

From that point on, they started to have less and less sex. Jake used the withdrawal as a form of punishment, knowing how much she craved it and that she couldn’t get it anywhere else. In his twisted ways, he managed to make her beg for it, for he would always punch her in the chest whenever he caught her masturbating under the blanket in the middle of the night (which was also why he forbade her to lock the door whenever she had to go to the bathroom, to make sure she was doing “only what she had to”).

The nightmare ended after about three months when Jake came home and showed Mariella a picture on his smartphone. In the photo was a naked woman who looked to be in her late thirties. Her blond hair was twisted into two pigtails, her eyes were closed, and she was smiling brightly while lying next to him. Mariella mustered the courage and demanded to know what the hell that was. Jake was brief; he only told her that woman’s name was Ashley, that she was his coworker, and that she would move in, which meant that Mariella had until the next day to move out.

Panic and confusion were the young waitress’s first reactions, but she soon contained herself and started to call every single crew member at the bar, asking for a temporary stay at their place. To her disappointment, not one of them was ready or able to help, using excuses like a significant other’s or other roommates’ disagreement about her stay. The only one who helped her was a musician whom she’d met at work, where he had also performed many times – John Kinzel. He and his wife, Leonarda, rented an apartment in the same neighborhood where Mariella lived with Jake and agreed to her living with them until she could find something affordable. And so, on that very same day, Mariella packed her things and left Jake Rakowski. John advised her to change her phone number and her workplace, so that Jake would have no chance of finding her. She did just that.

About a month later, John was to play saxophone at one of Oliver’s exhibitions. Leonarda asked whether Mariella would want to go with them. Sensing that this could finally be her chance to get noticed, she readily agreed. This was to be her ticket to fame, and she was determined to use it to her advantage.

Oliver didn’t treat her as badly as Jake used to. Not by a long shot. But despite maintaining his composure most of the time, Oliver’s general lethargy and torpor did make her contemplate suicide more than once whenever she was in his company. The first time they had sex was also the first time Mariella had to think about Jake again, for it was incomparably worse. Jake was a psycho, but had a cock like a bison. He could fuck her senseless, whereas Oliver acted as if he didn’t know how to do it. Like a teenager, a first-timer afraid of failure.

Seeing Jake made Mariella’s heart beat like a jackhammer. She wanted to grab him by his cock and run for her life at the same time. Maybe grab his cock and run away with it? She shook her head; she wasn’t making sense anymore.

So too did Oliver’s heart react when he saw how Jake was looking at his lover.

‘Oliver, look, he’s nobody–’

‘Nobody?’ Jake asked, and the whole room fell silent. ‘Oh, come on, girl! You can’t deny what was going on between us! I’m offended. I truly am.’

‘Mariella…’ Oliver’s eyes were wide open. He let out all the air he had, flaring his nostrils so visibly that those at the other end of the room could see it. ‘Who is he to you?’

Mariella bit her lip and looked alternately at the huntsman and the photographer.

A playful smile appeared on Jake’s face. ‘Go on. Tell him.’

‘He’s… Jake’s my ex.’

‘Your ex?’ Oliver asked calmly, but then his voice was anything but. ‘And you bring me here? What were you thinking?’

Mariella didn’t say anything, but Jake was quick to fill the silence. ‘Yeah, Mariella. What were you thinking, dragging this old, wrinkled baseball glove into our youthful midst?’

The people present at the party started to talk quietly among themselves without taking their eyes off the quarrelsome trio. Chuckles and giggles were slowly but surely surging above the whispers.

Oliver suddenly remembered his mother standing in front of his classmates. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He didn’t know how he was going to get from one minute to the next. He felt humiliated, lessened somehow, reduced to his fragile biology. He hated Jake because what he had said was true; he was old and he didn’t fit in with the rest.

Morneau didn’t have anything else to add. He strode to the door, took his coat, and exited the apartment. He silently hoped that Mariella would rush after him, but he couldn’t hear any footsteps behind him.

There was no moon in the sky, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of fumes and urine. When he left the building and put his feet on the concrete of the sidewalk, he knew they would take him to a place where he could have a drink. About twenty minutes into his joyless trek, a great sign hanging from the wall appeared before his eyes that said PALE HORSE TAVERN. He knew instantly that it was the place he was looking for. When he entered the establishment, he saw that it was almost filled to the brim with people, mostly middle-aged men. There were, however, a few unoccupied seats where he could sit down and enjoy his drink – a booth and two stools at the bar. He opted for one of the stools. He wanted to avoid the situation in which a group of men would come in and tell him to beat it, while the stools became taken in the meantime, leaving him with no place to rest his tired ass. Most of the guys were working-class people, he could tell by the clothes. That was also why his own clothes attracted so much attention. He even heard one person saying “Dude’s dressed like he’s going to the opera,” but decided to ignore the remark. He had had it with idiots that night.

Oliver seated himself next to a bearded, meaty, bald man, who must have been a regular there, judging by how he called the bartender by his first name. That must have been his stool too, Oliver thought, for his ass fit it like Cinderella’s foot in her missing shoe. He heard the bartender refer to the man as “Bobson,” but he didn’t know whether that was his first or last name. Probably the latter.

Oliver ordered a scotch on the rocks, gulped it down in a matter of seconds, and then, wanting to harmonize more with the men around him, a beer, which he didn’t rush to finish.

Some of the guys tried to quiet everyone down and told the bartender to turn up the volume on the TV. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the news. A woman’s voice reported over images taken at the courthouse where a man by the name of Martin Figgs was sentenced to life without parole for having murdered his wife and daughter. According to the police report, the veteran had cut them up and was about to feed their dismembered bodies to his two Rottweilers in order to move out of town with his lover, but his parents caught him red-handed during a surprise visit, thus ruining his malevolent plans. The whole nation had been waiting for three months to finally hear the verdict and was now satisfied with the heavy punishment imposed on the killer. Figgs stated that he would file an appeal, citing an unfair trial.

‘Can you blame the guy?’ another man, much older and sitting next to Oliver, leaned closer to ask him without taking his eyes off the TV.

Oliver just shot him a glance, but didn’t answer. He looked to him like a wannabe intellectual with his thick glasses askew and all the long, gray, disheveled hair.

‘Of course I can blame him!’ Bobson interjected. His voice had something indignant and challenging in it. ‘I see schmucks like that every day at work, claimin’ to be innocent. Like that Styles fella whom all of you know damn well. First, he shoots his best friend ‘cause he fucked his girl, goes on a killing spree, offin’ all the other witnesses, and then goes on cryin’, sayin’ he didn’t do anything. Gimme a fuckin’ break.’

‘Well, to me he’s just a victim of the system,’ the older gentleman said. ‘We, as a society, don’t treat people like that fella fairly. Look. We support the entertainment industry that produces people like that by promoting organized crime, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, violence, and instead of helping them by offering psychological counseling, we either send them to war or to jail, so that we may feel safe! Safe, can you believe that? While we’re still producing these kinds of people!’

Bobson shook his head and took a gulp of his beer. ‘What a load of crap.’

‘What?’ the old man said. ‘Am I wrong?’

The bartender, with the calm voice of a patient father, looked at his old client and said, ‘You better listen to the man, Freddy. Bobson’s a correctional officer. He knows what he’s talking about.’

Oliver Morneau heard the men, but his mind didn’t express the slightest volition to analyze the fate of others. His calculation was simple: was the condemned man inferior or superior to him? In a way, he was superior because he was able to pull off shit like killing his own family. But then again, he was sentenced to life in prison, subjugated by the authorities. After pondering it for a little while, Oliver figured that since Figgs was going to die incarcerated, the guy was indeed inferior to him.

He got up, dropped the money next to his beer, and, before making his way to the exit, said to his neighbors: ‘That bastard can rot in hell, as far as I’m concerned.’

Those who heard Oliver followed him with their eyes until he disappeared behind the door and into the city.

It was quite a long way home, but Oliver decided nonetheless to walk to his apartment. Putting one foot in front of the other had always helped him cope with shit he couldn’t stand, and what better way to get that snot-nosed smart aleck and that virtuous prick out of his head than by walking them off his mind? They had no right to do what they did, he thought.

Who does that fucking youngster think he is? Calling me out for my age in front of everybody? He was lucky Mariella and all the others were there, or I’d have grabbed his fucking neck and snapped it with my bare hands! And that nerd at the bar, did he think he was better than me? Who the hell did he think he was, Mr. Fucking Compassion? I would have made him eat his own goddamn bottle hadn’t it been for all those fuckheads around me.

His spiteful ruminations were suddenly interrupted when he heard a fragile voice coming out of the alley he was passing by.

‘Hey, mister? Got any spare change?’ asked a man with short blond hair. He was dressed in two thin jackets and a dingy pair of jeans. He also had a chunky woolen scarf wrapped around his neck and a black knitted cap sliding off the crown of his head. Every piece of clothing he was wearing had holes in it and was darkened by old stains whose origins Oliver had no desire to guess. He wore a long beard, shot with gray, and was missing every other tooth.

Morneau looked at the man and growled, ‘What did you say to me?’ Each word drifted out as a faint cloud that dissolved in the cold air.

The homeless man took a step back and asked again, much more reluctantly this time, ‘Can, uh, can you spare some change?’

Oliver was appalled by the man’s appearance. Not only were the clothes disgusting to him, but so were the man’s disheveled facial hair and the pungent, foul breath. If that wasn’t enough, his body smelled of shit and stale booze. Oliver was enraged that someone so repulsive and inferior to him could have had the audacity to open his stinking mouth in his direction.

Their mere encounter, Oliver felt, made them somehow connected; that meant he had gotten something from the homeless man, and that something now made him worse, lower, a bit less. He hated pathetic people like this guy, who didn’t know how to get ahead in life and had to be helped. He didn’t want to be affected by that bum’s miserable hopelessness; Oliver saw himself to be intrinsically superior to many – if not most – people and called to do greater things than to give such loathsome, smelly tramps his time or money.

Oliver approached the man and immediately noticed where he slept; his bed consisted of an unfolded cardboard box and a full garbage bag he used as a pillow. Next to it lay a rusty screwdriver, some crushed aluminum cans, and a toothbrush. ‘Yeah,’ he said in a soothing, amicable voice. ‘I think I might have something for ya, pal. What’s your name by the way?’ he asked as he made his way deeper into the alley.

The man smiled and rubbed his hands together. He answered, ‘Name’s Liam, sir.’

Oliver pointed at the garbage bag and, while fishing for his wallet in his coat, asked, ‘Is this where you sleep, Liam?’

Liam nodded. ‘Yes, sir. This gotta do for now.’

Miserable fool, Oliver thought.

‘Must be tough. I can’t even imagine.’

‘Very much so,’ Liam said and nodded. ‘But I try to be an optimist. I believe things will change for the better one day.’

‘I see,’ Oliver said, all the while struggling to take out his wallet. When he finally did, it flew right between Liam’s bed and a giant dumpster. ‘Damn it!’ He watched it land without trying to get it back.

‘No worries, sir! I’ll try and fetch that for ya!’ Liam said and bolted towards the dumpster to retrieve Oliver’s wallet.

Morneau didn’t hesitate. He used the fact that Liam turned his back on him, grabbed the screwdriver, and drove it into his back, again and again, each strike harder and deeper than the last. Blood started oozing out of every hole he made. A quiet grunt was all Liam could utter before he fell to the ground and slowly but surely bled to death. Oliver moved what he supposed was Liam’s corpse – for in the back of his mind, he considered the possibility of him having merely paralyzed the man by severing his spinal cord – with his foot to gain better access to his wallet. He picked it up from the ground and placed it back inside his coat. Immediately after that, he turned around and went back to the sidewalk to make sure his crime had not been witnessed by anyone.

If someone saw me, I’ll just say the bastard tried to steal my wallet, Oliver reassured himself mentally. He knew damn well that a homeless person, even dead, had no argument against a successful artist, a culturemaker!

He walked home much more content, feeling like he did the world a huge favor by taking out a useless social parasite, whose existence was completely unjustifiable. He was also satisfied with the fact that he was capable of liberating himself from the misery and weakness Liam had tried to impose on him the very moment he opened his smelly mouth at him. It had been a long time since something made him feel so cathartic, and he relished this moment.

Oliver got home about an hour after the killing. He didn’t even bother to put his coat back into the closet. He just threw it on the floor right after he’d closed the door to his apartment and let it lie there like it was nothing more than a cheap doormat.

He poured himself a glass of Bordeaux and went with it to the living room, where he turned on a table lamp and put a CD titled The Very Best of Franz Liszt into his sound system. The first track was his most famous piece, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor. Oliver loved it particularly for the strong influences of Hungarian folk music, which to him was a sophisticated mixture of Asian and European culture, since, from what he’d read, the Magyars, the Hungarians’ ancestors, had come from Asia to settle permanently in Europe after having crossed the Ural Mountains…

He frowned as he wondered why the fuck he was even thinking about the Hungarians now. Could be his mind trying to put on some kind of defense against all the shit Mariella, Jake Rakowski, and that old hippie at the bar had given him that night. He should shoot some pictures again, he considered, as he made himself comfortable in one of his armchairs. It had been quite a while since he’d done something, anything creative. And that turned out to be very therapeutic many a time, too. Maybe he should forget about Mariella and just dedicate himself to what he did best? Mariella was an amazing model, but the fact was that he kept screwing her instead of doing some serious work.

The late hour and the booze in his blood made his eyes close quickly. He let the glass of wine fall on the floor, a red puddle spreading under his shoes. He didn’t care about that; he was too exhausted to give a damn about anything at all by now.

He had no idea how long he had slept when he was suddenly woken up by someone’s slamming the door shut. Could it be that he had left it open? He shook his head at the increasing number of signs that screamed at him that he was getting old. When his eyes had finally adjusted, he saw Mariella standing in front of him, turning the music off.

‘What are you doing here?’ Oliver asked in a barely audible voice.

‘What am I doing here?’ she echoed, her hands placed on her hips. ‘What happened, Oliver? We’ve been looking, like, everywhere for you. I figured you must’ve gone straight home, so I ordered a ride and came here. I’m glad I found you.’

Oliver glanced at his watch and said, ‘Kind of late, huh?’ It was almost half past one.

‘Yeah. Kind of,’ she said.

They looked each other straight in the eye for a few seconds until Oliver finally mustered the strength to ask, ‘Did you fuck him?’

Mariella rolled her eyes. ‘Cut it out, Oliver.’

It was not the answer he was looking forward to, but he remained calm. The wine definitely helped. A slight shrug. ‘It’s a simple yes or no question.’

Mariella sighed and locked her eyes on Oliver again. ‘It’s none of your business, really.’

‘You did then?’

She looked sideways and moistened her lips. ‘He tried, but I wouldn’t let him.’

Her avoiding eye contact seemed more than suspicious to the photographer. ‘I see,’ he said and nodded. ‘If so, do you want to–’

‘Can’t. I gotta go, Oliver. I was worried and just wanted to make sure you were okay. I have some people waiting for me outside, so…’

He didn’t say anything initially, just spread his hands and nodded again. But not wanting to look like he ignored her, he said, ‘I’m fine.’

Mariella pressed her lips together. ‘Okay. See you on Wednesday then, right? Maybe we could shoot some photos.’ Mariella bent over, gave him a quick kiss on his cheek, and said goodbye before walking out of his apartment.

He looked at her leaving and sighed. This time he didn’t bother to respond.

END OF CHAPTER 3

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Chapter 2

Not a Customer

Oliver Morneau was six years old when he heard the strange voice for the first time. It was late at night and he was already dressed in his pajamas, kneeling in front of his bed and playing with the few toy soldiers he had. His merriment was suddenly interrupted when the deep, slurred voice told him to go to the attic. Young as he was, he was immediately taken aback by what he’d just heard. He even opened the door to his room to see if there was an uninvited guest standing in the corridor and commanding him in such an unexpectedly dominant manner. His father used to scare him on Halloween, but that had happened some months before, and he knew he would have to wait much longer for the next creepy celebration to arrive. There turned out to be no one in the corridor after all, but the voice kept insisting and little Oliver finally gave in, for he figured it would only stop after he had done what it demanded of him.

He saw that the wooden stairs leading to the attic had been pulled down and were resting firmly on the soft carpet laid along the narrow corridor. His parents had forbidden him to ever try and open the square-shaped door in the ceiling and climb those stairs – they could think of no possible way how in the world a child his age would be able to get it open in the first place, but his mother always used to say “forewarned is forearmed.” Yet the voice seemed to wield far more authority than his mother or his father, even when one of them got angry.

He went up slowly, afraid with each creak of the wood that his parents would discover this clandestine transgression of his. But the voice inside his head kept encouraging him not to go back just yet, and Oliver obeyed. When he had finally set both of his feet on the wooden floor of the dark and foul-smelling attic, he could see nothing but old boxes full of things that used to lie around the house, which contained old photographs of his parents back when they had been much younger, and toys he used to play with but now found too boring or too childish. The very next thing he felt was an overbearing compulsion to turn around. What he saw had such a strong impact on him that it would change his inner self for the rest of his life, serving as the first seed of his insecurities that would only grow with every year and decade. The structure of the roof was supported by many thick, long rafters, from one of which his father, Henry Morneau, was hanging; his unnaturally curved neck was tightly secured in a short noose.

Oliver didn’t scream. He didn’t call his mom for help. He didn’t even pray to God to miraculously bring his father back to life. He dropped onto his butt and watched as the inanimate corpse of his father swayed listlessly to and fro from the cursed piece of rope that had taken the man’s life.

Little Oliver did not recognize his father in the hangman in the attic right away. The small amount of light coming up from the corridor below initially illuminated Henry’s face only partially. Everyone who saw Oliver for the first time couldn’t help but point out the strong resemblance he bore to his father, which was why he thought he had seen himself hanging there, since the weak light highlighted only the traits the father and the son shared most. But upon further inspection, he was certain that the figure’s height and bulky physique meant that it had to be his father after all.

For his age, Oliver was deeply affected by his father’s death. At least internally, since externally no one could really tell whether the loss had affected him at all. But it had, since he had always seen his father as a role model while he was still alive.

Henry Morneau was originally from Fort North but once he found out he’d impregnated the twenty-eight-year-old Susan Hamming from Keysville, he was forced to settle in Dillon, midway between the two cities, almost four hundred miles away from his hometown. He worked in construction until his very last day. It was something that always made his little son look up to him. Little Oliver was fascinated by the way his father was able to fix virtually everything around the house with his wide array of tools, of which he could only name “hammer,” “screwdriver,” and “crowbar.” Henry was a man of formidable physique and even though he worked almost twelve hours every single day, he still pushed himself to exercise at home. In the last year of his life, he could do one thousand push-ups in a row. He wanted to maintain a healthy body in order to be able to provide for his family and not end up disabled, unable to pay for his son’s or wife’s basic needs.

Oliver always wanted to be just like his father, to copy him in every possible way. Grow into a clone of his progenitor. But once Henry died, something inside Oliver died as well, and he found himself failing miserably at every attempt to follow in his dad’s footsteps. Successful he turned out to be, but happy? Content? He wasn’t sure.

And after nearly sixty years, Oliver Morneau heard the same voice that once led him to discover his father hanging in the attic.

Oliver’s hands were trembling as he looked at his name printed on the flyer. Similarly, his lips refused to stop quivering. He wanted to call Mariella, who now appeared to be miles away from him, but his voice would not obey him. He didn’t understand why he was so worried, so afraid, and apprehensive in the first place. Anyone could’ve had that name. And surname. People shared the same name, the same date of birth – those kind of overlaps happened all the time. But that something inside of him kept insisting, telling him that what he was looking at wasn’t a mere coincidence, that something far more important was at stake here. Oliver had no idea what was going on, but he knew that he had to visit that store and see the owner for himself. Again, he wouldn’t be able to justify this move, but it was what that quiet yet persistent voice kept telling him to do.

When Mariella came back from the balcony, she immediately understood that something was off. Oliver had noticed her return just in time to conceal the flyer from her sight, slipping it under a heap of paperback novels haphazardly piled on the table between the two armchairs, only one of which he’d begun to read – Resurrection by Tolstoy.

The frigid wind sneaked into the apartment and only when it touched Oliver’s skin did he notice that he was still naked.

‘What’s the matter, bubs? Are you okay? Hang on, I’ll bring you some clothes,’ said Mariella. What she was referring to was the uncontrollable manner in which his body was shaking, for she knew nothing of her lover’s true concern and thought he was merely cold.

Oliver’s full bladder didn’t seem to be a priority to him anymore.

He put on the same clothes he’d been wearing before fulfilling his duty as a lover and stood in the middle of the room until the silence became too awkward to bear.

‘What?’ Mariella asked, getting dressed too.

‘Nothing.’ A lie. And she seemed to sense it. Besides, the photographer couldn’t tell his lover what exactly he had seen. She would probably just wave the whole incident away, say it was nothing more than a coincidence and thus strip this great and puzzling discovery of his of all its uncanny uniqueness.

‘Oliver!’

Everything happened in less than a second. He wasn’t planning to say it, but once the first word of the request left his mouth, there was no way to stop the rest of the unremitting sequence of words that formed it. ‘I need you to go with me.’

He sank into the armchair and released a deep sigh. There. He said it. He had just proven to her that he was a man – and a middle-aged one at that! – who couldn’t take care of his own business.

Mariella frowned and shook her head. ‘Where to?’

‘I…’ he raised his eyebrows and blinked briskly a few times. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. At least not yet,’ he said, then added in a firmer, more reassuring tone of voice, ‘You’ll see once we’re there.’

Despite the smile on her face, Mariella didn’t find the situation funny. ‘Oliver, I’ve got stuff to do, you know? I can’t just go somewhere with you without even knowing when I’ll come back. I’ve got a schedule to stick to.’

Oliver nodded. ‘I know. It won’t take long, since it’s not too far from here. I literally have to see something, verify it, and then you’re free to go.’

Mariella tilted her head, her eyes widening. ‘Well, thank you very much, your highness!’

Oh, the humiliation of explaining himself to a person who was separated from him by the chasm of four fucking decades! He scowled as he said, ‘Forgive me. I’m asking you to go with me, and I would appreciate it if you did.’

She put her hands on her hips and asked, ‘Go where, Oliver?’

‘Again, I’m not sure I can tell you right now. You–’

A sigh cut him off mid-explanation. Mariella didn’t look at him. She held her open palms close to her temples and stared at the floor when she said: ‘All right, Oliver. Fuck it. Let’s just fucking go. Let’s get this over with.’

They walked to the hunting store in complete silence. Oliver wouldn’t give in and speak first; he wouldn’t belittle himself that much. But he found it rather surprising that Mariella hadn’t uttered one word either. Normally she would be quick to comment on interesting things that happened at work, and if nothing did, she would comment on virtually anything that caught her eye. But today she wasn’t the usual cute chatterbox. This was also the first time Oliver seriously worried about what she felt toward him. Did she actually like him as a person? True, he kept her under the impression that he still worked on the perfect photo of her, the one he would be proud enough of to present at the downtown exhibition in three months. And all that was being done so that he could continue making use of her body, because there was no other woman that would go so far as to allow him to even touch her – of that, he was more than sure. That was why he did his best to nurture the relationship they had, as dysfunctional as it seemed.

But then another thought struck him – what if she was doing the same to him? What if she only had sex with him because she wanted something in exchange for giving him her body, along with all the niceties, smiles, and terms of endearment? Would she abandon him after her big breakthrough?

The thought and the fact that Mariella kept her mouth shut made him livid! Not only did it mean she was using him like a tool, but it also made him look incredibly stupid in front of everyone they passed! She could have at least put on a mask and pretended that everything was okay between them so that people on the street might not get the wrong impression of him – that he was some kind of loser who didn’t know how to comfort his woman. But he decided to ignore her egregious behavior toward him for now. Now he had to face something he couldn’t even name! The only thing he was certain of was the ominous presentiment that it would be something he absolutely had to see; and the voice inside him confirmed it.

Sabertooth wasn’t that far from Oliver’s apartment – half a mile at most. It looked rather inconspicuous on the outside, but once Morneau and his young lover entered the store, it was a completely different world. The first thing that struck the photographer was the enormous deer head hanging on the wall behind the counter, surrounded by different types of rifles. He would never have known the slightest difference between the weapons apart from their sizes. The counter was made of glass, and under it one could see an array of knives of all different shapes.

To Oliver’s disappointment, the owner, the supposed Oliver Morneau 2.0, was nowhere to be seen.

Mariella pulled on the sleeve of his trench coat and whispered, ‘Oliver, why the hell are we here?’

‘Please, Mariella, just have a little more patience,’ he answered in like manner. ‘We’re literally on our way out.’

Still whispering, she said, ‘Would you mind telling me just what the fuck is going on?’

He ignored his lover’s request and pulled her deeper into the store, so that they could hide between the shelves. They were moving slowly among the merchandise the store offered to sell and there seemed to be everything a huntsman could need: jackets, vests, caps, hats, belts, bags, backpacks, tents, bows, arrows, binoculars, even fishing gear. Most of the clothes were camouflage-patterned.

Oliver craned his neck gingerly as he heard a peculiar noise coming from the other side of the store. He didn’t want to make the reason he was there too obvious to Mariella, so he tried to look out of the corner of his eye at the man who had just emerged from the back room and approached the counter from the other side, sat on a stool, and swiped on his phone. He was dressed in a green military jacket with a bright white star on the left side of his chest. Because the vendor was looking down at the device, his face was obscured from the rest of the world, but when he combed back his full, shoulder-long hair with his fingers, Morneau was finally able to see the man’s face. He froze as the hairs on his neck and forearms stood on end. His breath was imprisoned inside the cage of his chest when he beheld the vendor, and when he attempted to inhale, he had to glance away for a second, just to look back again at the man’s face, which exactly resembled his! Sure, there were a lot of features that made him distinct from Oliver – he was far more muscular, the skin on his face looked incomparably healthier, pulled tighter over the muscles of a strong jaw covered in subtle stubble – but the face! The eyes, the nose, the lips, even the high cheekbones! It was as if someone had imprinted Oliver’s face onto that man’s skull!

He started to breathe more steadily now that the initial shock had passed. He felt a concoction of emotions. Yes, he was scared by seeing himself, which was like looking at a brought-to-life wax figure, but at the same time, he was enchanted by the man’s appearance. Oliver thought he could one day look just like him. But as soon as he realized that, a vain desire overwhelmed his mind – he didn’t merely want to look like that man. He needed to look like him. He yearned to BE him.

As soon as the vendor noticed someone had entered his store, he stood up and called out, ‘Hey, can I help y’all?’

Oliver, still in hiding, cleared his throat and answered, ‘Nah, we’re just looking around. On our way out, actually. But thanks!’

‘Yeah?’ the man asked. ‘You sure?’ He went around the counter to approach the pair of lovers, suspecting they were some kids who wanted to steal something from the store.

Upon noticing him, Oliver grabbed Mariella’s arms and ducked into another aisle to avoid facing the owner. He was striding toward the exit.

‘Hey, I think I know that guy!’ Mariella said as Oliver opened the door.

Oliver snorted. The “guy” looked exactly like him. There was, therefore, no reason for her not to recognize him. ‘Don’t be silly, Mariella. Of course you know him.’

Outside the store, Oliver was still holding Mariella close, forcing her to keep up with his hurried pace.

About seventy feet from the store, Mariella’s patience had come to an end. ‘What are you doing? Let go of me, man!’ she said and was finally able to free herself from Oliver’s vise-like grip.

‘Forgive me, Mariella. I just had to get out of there as soon as I could.’

A deep wrinkle formed between her brows, and her blue eyes fixed on the emptiness behind his glasses. ‘What is going on, Oliver? You’re losing it.’ She wanted to add “old man” but decided against it. Then she remembered that Morneau was her only ticket to make it big and softened her tone. ‘Are you okay, honey? What happened back there?’

The only thing the photographer managed to do was rub his hands briskly against his cheeks and let out a lungful of air. He crossed his arms and, because he didn’t want to admit he was afraid, said, ‘Please, don’t get me wrong. I, uh, I’m probably just still dealing with my mother’s death, you know. I just haven’t been myself lately. I swear, this won’t happen again.’ He was so disgusted with these apologetic words he’d just said, he could puke right on her shoes without feeling the slightest bit of remorse.

She extended her hand and caressed his soft cheek. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get over it. Hopefully sooner than later.’

Oliver pressed his lips together and offered a brisk nod.

‘So?’ she asked and gave him a tense little smile.

‘So what?’

‘You still haven’t answered me. Will you go to the party with me?’

He looked at his watch and said, ‘I’ll think about it and let you know.’

‘Just don’t make me wait too long, okay?’ Mariella said. She kissed the same cheek she had just caressed and walked away.

Oliver stood there for a few seconds as he beheld the dignified way she did not walk but danced down the street, one leg gracefully moving in front of the other.

Would he go… Of course he would go! Could he ever allow himself to decline her invitation and let her go alone, to find someone younger and more attractive than he was? He would lose her forever. It would be an irreparable mistake! She would never look at him the same way again. His answer was nothing more than a game people played to avoid appearing too dependent, too needy.

What fools we are to still engage in those silly games, he thought as he finally moved toward his apartment. Instead of saying “yes” or “no,” we use this elusive language to show how supposedly cunning we can be. He shook his head and lit a cigarette. What a pathetic fucking species.

END OF CHAPTER 2

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Chapter 1

A New Beginning

“Masochist” would be too much of a word, perhaps, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that Oliver Morneau hated himself.

Profoundly.

Without relief.

For reasons neither few nor simple.

Most of those reasons could be traced back to his mother, who, too concerned with how the people she knew – or didn’t even know – might have seen her through the prism of her son’s failures, would always come up with different criticisms to man up her adult child. For his own good, of course.

He was too skinny because he didn’t eat enough.

Then he ate too much; what, did he want to become fat?

“Imagine the scandal if my friends and sisters found out my son was gay!” the mother would say every so often, commenting on her son’s wifeless status at that time.

But when he started to entertain the idea of dating women, he was immediately accused of being promiscuous and of wanting to abandon his own birthgiver.

“You’re too agreeable!”

“You’re too aggressive!”

Not once in his lifetime had Oliver Morneau been able to please his mother. And since he couldn’t please his mother, he couldn’t please the world. And what good was a man who couldn’t positively contribute to society? And why should one be fond of a society that does not appreciate one’s efforts in the first place? And thus, the dislike toward people had been born in him. Oliver Morneau was, therefore, not a masochist, no; he was a self-loathing misanthrope – he hated others as he hated himself.

“How do you want to socialize with other people if you don’t smoke?” the mother would also frequently ask.

Picking up smoking, however, did not turn out to be a good alternative, either.

“Don’t you know that smoking can kill you? Besides, no mother should have to bury her child, Oliver! Why don’t you think of someone other than yourself for once?”

But it was she who had won the race to the grave, after all.

Oliver came to the cemetery to take a look at the small gravestone that had been put there earlier that day. It was nothing special, really, just a piece of concrete sticking out of a patch of lifeless grass. The gravestone, which had nothing on it except for his mother’s first and last names and the dates of her birth and her death, reminded Oliver so much of her. There had been nothing exceptional, nothing extraordinary about her life, nothing big she could be remembered for. And yet that bleak thing of a woman with the sensibility of a carpet and the ability to empathize of a sociopath had managed to define his whole life, his very psyche!

He hated himself for having allowed that to happen to him, too.

But all in all, the stonemason had done quite a good job, and Oliver was happy he hadn’t thrown all that money in the trash.

Despite having been raised Catholic, Oliver was not a religious man and therefore didn’t intend to pray over his mother’s dead body or her eternal soul, whatever that meant. He’d decided that he wouldn’t say anything, either. What was there to say? She was dead and couldn’t hear him. And even if she could, she most probably wouldn’t listen. That seemed to justify his absolute silence enough for him not to feel guilty about it.

It was quite a sunny day for late November, but the piercingly cold air amplified the putrid stench of the cemetery to such an unbearable degree that it had become simply too appalling for Oliver and his acute sense of smell to stay there a second longer. He could almost taste the dirt, the worms, and the rotten remains coating the roof of his mouth.

Before he walked away from his mother’s grave, however, he made the sign of the cross. Again, not because he was a religious man, but because he felt the urge to do something before he went on with his life. In a sense, he saw it as a handshake with the dead to bid the ultimate farewell to them, including his late mother. He hoped with his whole heart that it would work.

He took a pack of cigarettes out of his beige trench coat and lit one as he waited for the taxi to drive up to the curb. Marlboro Reds. His mother had taught him well.

Upon entering the cab, Oliver asked the driver whether he could have a smoke inside the car, because he still had more than half a cigarette left. The driver, a brawny man with olive skin and a mustache, told him with a heavy accent that the company he worked for didn’t allow it but, a smoker himself, he undid the imposed prohibition with a brisk wave of his meaty hand. Oliver thanked him and inclined his bald head so as not to hit the roof while piling into the small vehicle for hire.

Oliver sighed as he looked out the window and observed with drooping eyelids the neighborhood he had seen so many times. In fact, he knew it so well that he was convinced he could draw a detailed plan of it blindfolded.

He turned to the driver, looked at him in the rearview mirror, and, with a smile and a frown on his face, said, ‘Excuse me, sir.’

‘Yes?’ the driver asked and reciprocated Oliver’s gaze through the same medium.

‘Pardon me if I’m too inquisitive. I thought I heard an accent when you spoke.’ This brief exchange of words alone made him nauseous, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

‘Nothing to be sorry for.’ The mustache smiled and waved his hand in much the same way he had not two minutes earlier. ‘You’re right, sir. I don’t think my English is that bad, but the pronunciation is something I will probably never master.’

‘Why, it’s not bad at all!’ Oliver forced a smile and adjusted his red-rimmed glasses. ‘May I ask where you’re from? Originally, that is.’

‘By all means. I’m from Brazil, sir. São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos.’

Morneau must have blinked at least five times in one second before he leaned forward and asked, ‘Sorry, what’s that?’

‘The name of the city – Salvador.’

‘Oh,’ Oliver said as if he’d just found out that he wouldn’t have dinner that day. ‘I’ve only ever heard of Rio and Sao Paulo. I thought Salvador was a country.’

The driver burst out laughing. ‘Ah, yes, El Salvador, you mean. That’s what most foreigners know about Brazil, anyway. Salvador is the third-biggest city after the two you’ve mentioned, but unfortunately, people seem to remember only those two.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that. And what is Salvador known for, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Many fantastic things! It was the first capital of Brazil, and it is known for being a cultural mix of Southern Europe and Africa. That’s why it’s often called the largest African city outside of Africa.’

‘The largest African city outside of Africa. Interesting,’ said Oliver while tapping his index finger on his cheek. ‘Say, Mr.–’

‘Duarte. But my friends call me Carlos.’

‘Oliver Morneau. Oliver,’ he said, and they shook their hands in an improvised manner. ‘Say, Carlos, what made you leave such a vibrant city for this… concrete maze?’

‘Ah, I know what you must think. Driving a cab here’s probably still better for a poor immigrant than whatever it was he was doing back home, eh?’

He did not want to come across as rude, but that was more or less what Oliver had thought, indeed. And since it was too delicate an issue to answer, he stayed silent, letting the man know he was listening.

‘I used to work as a neurosurgeon in Brazil and, believe me, I earned a lot of money doing my job. I could afford an expensive apartment in one of the best neighborhoods and had the respect of basically everyone in my hometown for the work I was doing. But after a while, I met Julia, my wife. We decided to get married and have children, and as our children grew older, so the violence in the cities got worse and worse with every year. And I’m not talking about pickpockets. I’m talking about fifteen-year-old snot-nosed kids stabbing you in the liver to steal your phone, only to sell it for a few dollars and buy an ounce of crack. And that’s not a one-time thing either. It’s a regular plague over there. For many years we used to have a higher homicide rate than Iraq and Syria combined! And we all know what happens in those countries.’ Carlos Duarte shook his head. ‘Human life ceased to mean anything in Brazil a long time ago. That’s why we decided to come here. The crime rates here are incomparably lower – that’s what attracted us in the first place. Then of course there was also the cosmopolitan atmosphere that our two countries share. But that was secondary. First, we had to survive.’

Oliver’s eyes widened and he couldn’t say anything for a few seconds. Now it was his turn to say something, but he didn’t even know where to start. ‘That’s... That’s so horrible, Carlos. Brazil is such a beautiful country from what I saw. It surely doesn’t deserve the things it’s going through,’ he said more out of politeness than conviction.

‘Thank you,’ Carlos said and focused on the road.

‘But what I ask myself is, and please don’t be offended, why would such a sophisticated professional doctor like you drive a cab? You should be operating on people! Saving lives!’

It seemed that a mere shrug was all Carlos managed to do, and a slow one at that, as if he had to put double the effort into heaving his shoulders. ‘I would really love to work as a doctor again. To me it’s something more than a profession – it’s a calling. I love helping people, but what can I say? Laws differ from country to country, and here I would have to pass a multitude of examinations, get recertified, repeat residency training. The list goes on and on. In other words, start all over again. And we don’t have that much money yet, so I’m kind of stuck. At least for now. But let me tell you something, Oliver,’ and here he exposed his impeccably white teeth in a thin smile. ‘There’s certainly an advantage to this job. If you stop to think how many cabs drive around this huge city, this is the car for the perfect crime! There are so many of them here, the police wouldn’t even know which cab to chase!’

The taxi came to a sudden halt before Oliver could even think of an answer. Was this a joke, the man’s way of loosening things up? He hadn’t noticed how familiar the street looked to him.

‘But anyway, we’ve arrived,’ Carlos said and let Oliver know how much the fare was.

Oliver paid him more than was due and added a fifty percent tip on top of that. He then asked Carlos whether he had a business card so that whenever he needed a ride, he would make sure to call only him, to support him as much as he could. He felt like he owed him that, given how poorly his country treated the educated newcomer. He could more than sympathize with him, for Oliver truly believed that he hadn’t been treated the way he should have been in life, either. Carlos said he didn’t have a business card yet, so he wrote his phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Oliver. The men shook hands again, and the taxi finally departed after Oliver had delicately tapped twice on the car’s roof. Normally there would have been nothing that would force him to give a stranger more money than he or she needed, but with Carlos, for some inexplicable reason, Oliver had a strange premonition that he had finally met someone worth his time and emotions. And his money.

Oliver Morneau owned an apartment in a cube-shaped building that was built in the late nineteen forties. The other two tenants lived on the first floor: Mr. Kowalski, a grumpy retired barber; and Mrs. Sullivan, an older but very noble-looking woman who was the widow of a war veteran. Each of them rented a small apartment downstairs, whereas Oliver owned the bigger apartment on the top floor, above the other two. As he opened the main entrance door to step inside, a boy walking past on the sidewalk, flung a thick stack of flyers at him with the intent that some of them would land inside and spark the tenants’ interest. Most of them flew straight into Oliver’s face. His initial bafflement at this unforeseen situation froze him completely in his guarded posture, but once he regained his sharp alertness, he wanted to run after that little rascal. Unfortunately, it was too late; the young flyer distributor had so much vigor in his legs that he’d managed to disappear somewhere behind the corner by the time Oliver wanted to commence his pursuit.

Disheartened by his rival’s youthfulness, he turned back and walked up to the second floor. He was out of breath already. This simple climb used to be much easier when he was thirty, and now a tremor went through him whenever he thought that it would only get worse with each decade. He was sixty-five now and frequently wondered how many decades there were left for him. One and a half? Two, if he was lucky? Smoking was very much a relaxing activity for him, but the fact that it took a toll on his health could not be ignored. He hated himself for being a slave to such a small, fragile, and insignificant thing as a cigarette.

He fished a set of keys out of the right pocket of his black pants and was about to slide one of them into the keyhole when he noticed that the door to his apartment was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and, step by step, entered his dwelling ever so slowly.

Could somebody have broken in? Was someone trying to steal his equipment? It was worth a small fortune, so he imagined how someone who knew about it could have been interested in selling it and walking away with enough to disappear, or to start over.

He was about to step into the living room when he felt a wave of cold run through his whole body, as if someone had thrown a bucketful of ice at him. The young woman standing between the two leather chairs in the middle of the room was naked and stood in a position as though she was about to be painted by Botticelli, or Weguelin. His sudden perplexity was done away with the moment the woman’s stunningly symmetrical physiognomy became adorned with a marvelous smile that exposed her pearly teeth. His placidity was complete once he had noticed the small dimples in her cheeks that enchanted him each time he looked at them.

‘I’ve been waiting for you so long,’ the woman said in a calm, serene voice. ‘Where have you been?’

‘So it must be Wednesday then…’ Oliver’s voice was suddenly so low, it was barely audible. As happy as he was about the company the woman offered him in his apartment, he felt like time, and life itself, was slipping through his fingers. He thought it was only Monday. Had he started to lose track of time? In this manner he could live for another hundred years, and on his deathbed it would still feel as though he had lived but a few days.

The young woman, whose name was Mariella, nodded briskly, all the while maintaining the gorgeous, radiant smile.

Mariella Purington was twenty-two and had met Oliver Morneau at a small party in the neighborhood of Auburn Heights a year earlier. The party was organized by the wife of Oliver’s friend John Kinzel – a saxophonist who used to play with his band at Oliver’s photography exhibitions. Oliver went on tour with the band across the continent, shot pictures of them every night they played, and so they got the idea that they shouldn’t part ways immediately after the tour but also combine music and photography during his exhibitions. It turned out to be a huge success, earning rave reviews in all the major newspapers, and they decided to celebrate that. John was only twenty-five at that time and introduced Oliver to the then twenty-one-year-old Mariella, whom he had known from the bar she worked at and where he had played a few gigs. Morneau was instantly enraptured with Mariella’s breathtaking beauty, and upon finding out she was an aspiring model, didn’t hesitate to ask her if she would be interested in doing some modeling, saying he was sure she could be very successful after being seen by all the hotshots, with a hotshot, in Dillon. Her hesitation was just as short-lived, and a week later they were already together in Oliver’s apartment, some fifteen miles from where they had first met. Oliver had always tried to be honest with himself, and he knew that the only thing he wanted from Mariella was her body. Not primarily for shooting photos, but for reasons that had their origin in the deepest parts of his most primal instincts. There was not a part of her body he wanted to leave without at least one kiss. He wanted the smell of her hair to infiltrate every lobe of his lungs. He wanted to enter her and leave something of himself so that, in a way, she would be forever, at least in part, his, marked by his bodily fluids. And they had been meeting regularly for a year now. Mariella tended bars at night and did some modeling here and there to support herself, but nothing groundbreaking. On Wednesdays she visited Oliver at his apartment. The photo shoots soon turned out to be of secondary importance. For both of them, what had preference and priority was getting into bed together. The kitchen table, the floor also worked – whatever was closest while the passion in them boiled with an unstoppable fervor.

‘Do you want to start our day with the photos?’ Mariella asked in a timid, almost childlike voice.

Oliver smiled at her, exposing his big, yellowed teeth, and moved toward her slowly. As he came closer, more and more pieces of his clothing fell to the floor. First the trench coat, the tie, the impeccably white shirt. Of the rest they would take care later. He took her by her hips and said, ‘Or maybe we shouldn’t start with the photos?’

Nothing but an enigmatic smirk was her response. She took his hand and led the photographer to his bedroom.

Half an hour later they were lying next to each other on their backs, the creased white quilt reaching as far as Mariella’s armpits and the top of Oliver’s belly. They were having a smoke now, their cigarettes placed carefully between the chopsticks that came with the Chinese food Mariella had ordered before Oliver’s arrival. The cigarette was the best thing that could happen to him now. Not merely because it temporarily satiated his addiction, or “fed the cancer,” as he often said, but because it helped him to appear relaxed, for deep inside, in his heart of hearts, he was shitting his pants. He loved the sex with Mariella, tremendously, but he could never fully enjoy it due to the constant fear of not being able to satisfy her. Every time he entered her, instead of giving himself away to the bliss of joining his body with hers, he immediately compared himself to others. She was young, attractive, and must have had many sexual partners before him. Tempted as he was, he would never go so far as to call her a promiscuous whore, but a woman like Mariella could, without a doubt, have anyone she wanted. And when you’re in a position like that, of course you’re going to choose only top-shelf quality merchandise. How many muscular, athletic dudes had she had who were tanned, ripped, with a head full of thick, neatly trimmed hair? Four? Nine? And how did he look in comparison to those studs? He was sixty-five but felt as if he were eighty already! The skin under his chin or on his almost non-existent triceps was becoming more and more loose. He’d started to lose his hair when he was twenty-three. Since then, the receding hairline was moving backward at such a fast pace that, in a matter of five years, the only place where his hair was left was right above his ears and on the back of his head, leaving the top a shiny spot, devoid of any follicles, that made him look older and, in a way, sicker too. So he opted to shave his head bald; that was – according to him – the only way to preserve any decency in his appearance. Oliver had never been interested in any sports either, and the smoking only added to his miserable hideousness. Sometimes he wondered whether it could have been a hormone-based problem, but the doctor’s office was a place he had always given a wide berth, for fear the doc could discover something far worse responsible for his bodily problems. Living in ignorance was much more appealing than being aware of a potential time bomb ticking away inside of him.

These postcoital contemplations, which in his head didn’t last more than a few seconds, gave birth to another question that had been bugging him ever since he had met Mariella: why him? Why did she keep meeting him, giving him her body? It was true, he was a famous and renowned photographer, and whoever worked with him could be sure as hell they would have a successful life till the day they died. But there was something more to it, he could tell. She spent time with him after every time they slept with each other, talked to him in such a genuine way that he shouldn’t have even suspected any malignant motives on her part. Yet he could not comprehend how someone so perfect could feel anything for someone so flawed and repulsive. Of course he didn’t have the courage to ask her that directly and thus risk losing her for evermore. Maybe something was wrong with her? That defect of her liking Oliver could be the cause – or a symptom – of her imperfection and that was why the laws of nature allowed them to be together and share those tranquil moments like this. Two imperfect people, together.

They’d had sex so many times that by now neither of them bothered to ask about the other’s feelings or satisfaction afterward.

‘Are you busy on Saturday?’ asked Mariella. She took a deep drag on her cigarette, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

‘Saturday?’ Oliver echoed, and in the blink of an eye turned his head toward his guest. ‘I... I guess I’m not too busy. Why?’

‘There’s this party I was invited to, and I have no one to go with. So I thought maybe…’

Oliver’s jaw tightened. ‘A party?’ he asked louder than was necessary.

‘Yeah,’ Mariella said, all the while twirling her hair. ‘I promised I would go, but you know how unsafe it can be for a young and pretty girl like me to walk alone at night–’

‘All right, all right.’ Oliver closed his eyes and started to massage his forehead with his thumb and index finger. ‘I just wish you had told me this earlier.’

‘I just found out the other day,’ Mariella said as she got out of bed. She was naked like the day she was born. Oliver wasn’t able to take his eyes off of her muscular legs and strong, round buttocks. His placid state, however, was interrupted by what she said next: ‘What’s the big deal, anyway?’

‘What’s the big deal?’ Oliver asked while looking at the back of her head. His eyes were nearly hidden under a heavy frown. ‘For God’s sake, I just buried my mother and now I’m supposed to be so, so – what – insouciant?’

With her lover’s white shirt already covering most of her body, she turned around and said, ‘I thought you didn’t like her…’

‘Mariella!’ Oliver growled through his teeth and shot her a heavy, unyielding look.

She looked intensely into his hazel eyes for a second or two before saying she would make them some coffee. That was good because it meant she wasn’t too mad at him, or at least she didn’t feel like arguing. For Oliver and Mariella – although, truth be told, they didn’t see each other often enough to develop many of their own distinct rituals – drinking coffee together was a sign of goodwill and friendliness. Just like vodka in Russia or tea in Hong Kong, the black brew was, for them, more than a simple beverage. It had been elevated to the status of a symbol. A symbol of peace.

But even so, Oliver was still angry. With her and himself. Over the fact that she was wrong and right at the same time. It wasn’t her business whether he’d had a good or bad relationship with his mother, but then again, she was right in that because it hadn’t been a particularly good one, he shouldn’t necessarily have made mourning her a higher priority than Mariella and her needs. Besides, it was true that he had involved her by telling her how he felt about his mother, which meant he no longer had the right to scold her for expressing her opinion.

The warm and bitter smell of coffee had spread throughout the apartment and reached Oliver’s bedroom when Mariella reentered it, holding two mugs filled to the brim with their favorite beverage.

She set the mugs on the rustic bedside table on Oliver’s side and, after a long sigh, said, ‘I could use another smoke.’ She wanted to have it outside, but the slightest opening of the balcony door made her shiver, and her skin was soon covered in goosebumps.

Oliver lit the cigarette for her.

‘Can I use your coat?’ Mariella asked.

Oliver thought her voice sounded flat, almost robotic. ‘Sure,’ he finally replied. ‘It’s somewhere on the floor. In the living room, I think. I’ll get it for you.’ He removed the quilt and jumped out of bed.

Mariella put the cigarette between her lips while Oliver helped her into the coat.

‘Are you coming with me?’

‘I’d love to, but I have to go to the bathroom first. Gotta take a leak, you know.’

She smiled and turned away. His eyes followed her slow gait as she walked toward the balcony with undisguised lust and an untamed, limitless passion. But no matter how exciting her curves were, she looked hilarious to him right now, like a child who puts on their parents’ clothes to discover what it feels like to be an adult.

As he took a step towards the bathroom, Oliver felt his left foot step on something smooth and cold. He peeled the flat object off his sole and recognized at once that it was one of the flyers that scoundrel had thrown at him when he entered the building. The words SABERTOOTH were printed in bold white letters at the top against a dark blue background. Reading further, he learned that it was a store that sold hunting gear. He immediately figured it must have gotten stuck in one of the coat’s pockets and fallen out when he picked the garment up for Mariella. Normally, he wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing it away, but what caught his attention was a most peculiar thing: when he saw the name of the store’s owner, he had to rub his eyes and even considered pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

The flyer had his very name on it.

END OF CHAPTER 1

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Chapter 13

The Dream Is Dead

Some ten hours after he’d gotten even with Dash, Adam took a seat on the bus and was heading home. The backpack rested on his knees like a pet he hoped wouldn’t roar, for inside it was the sawed-off shotgun Max had given him. A gift, for safety reasons. You never know what’s gonna happen, Styles could still hear him say in his head.

He would have to rearrange his life entirely. Start everything anew. Anything – no matter how small the detail – that in any way, shape, or form tied him to his shady past had to sink into oblivion.

However, he couldn’t do it quite yet. Yes, things began to brighten somewhat, but he was still bound by his word. In a week’s time, his friends in vendetta were to visit him to retrieve the promised drugs; they had figured they would have to lay low for a while first, so as not to attract unwanted attention. How they would pull it off, he had no idea. In fact, Adam didn’t even know whether the old warehouse was still guarded by Dash’s guys, who by now could only be guessing that their boss had been dead.

Upon remembering how many people worked for his former boss – unaware that most of them had already left Dash’s organization – he imagined how difficult an endeavor it could become to pry the drugs from the henchmen’s hands. Then again, when he considered how agile and capable Raphael and Max had been with their guns, Adam was sure they would form an invincible trio. The guns and the balls needed to show up at a place like that should be arguments enough for the thugs to hand it all over. If they valued their lives.

Slowly but surely, the bus rolled toward Styles’s stop. He had all the time in the world now that he had dealt with the most lethal of his problems – Roman Dash. But despite his liberation from the former hierarchy, he found himself in a desperate hurry; after going through betrayal, imprisonment under those humiliating conditions, losing his family, and nearly getting killed in a strange and unfamiliar city, the only thing he wanted now was to go home. And even there, what would he find? The decomposing bodies of his dead relatives lying on the floor in pools of dried-up blood? He shook his head and rubbed his bald temples. No. There were still many things to be taken care of and absolutely no time to lose. Every second was of the highest value, and that was why he got up from his seat early, before the bus fully stopped, and walked all the way from the back toward the front, to the exit.

Amped up as he was to finally leave the long vehicle, Adam failed to notice a leg stretched across the aisle between the seats, belonging to one of the passengers who had just woken up from a nap. He tripped over it and fell. In a desperate bid to save his face, Adam threw his forearms up and covered his nose and forehead. But his reflexes were useless; his features still hit the grimy floor.

Adam initially wanted to ignore this incident and just go on with his life, but something stopped him. He had just stumbled and fallen in front of everybody, right on his scarred face. With that, his sense of self suffered a fierce blow. What bothered him most was that it needn’t have happened. He knew that accidents occurred, but unnecessary embarrassments defied his standards of prudence and control. He felt asinine for crashing down, especially since it could have been avoided. And just who the fuck did those people think they could mess with? The great Adam Styles, who worked for the mob and killed his own boss, the widely feared Roman Dash? He was supposed to let this public humiliation slide? Never! He was not to be fucked with anymore! And people would have to know it – even if they had to learn it the hard way.

He got up swiftly, his face red and tense, and rummaged through his backpack. While the perpetrator of this accident tried to cobble together an apology, Adam pulled out the sawed-off shotgun, turned around, and, aiming at the young man’s head, pulled the trigger.

Despite all the horrors he’d witnessed while working for Dash, he was startled to discover just how much the bloody sight he now beheld horrified him, no matter how many people he’d killed in the past. But at the same time, he realized he felt a certain kind of fulfillment – gratification, even – one far greater than that caused by Dash’s death.

Gasps and shrill screams filled the bus as a mist of blood and brain matter exploded and splattered onto the window. All eyes settled on Adam, and he understood that he had to escape as soon as possible before anyone could get a good look at him and pass his mug along to the cops, who were not on his payroll. He was about to turn around when all of a sudden, the person sitting next to the decapitated cadaver – a young man barely into his twenties – stood up and punched Adam with all his strength, right in the cheek. A piercing ringing exploded in his ears as the vehicle’s interior began to spin around him. The scar, where the blow landed, split open, gushing blood freely down his haggard face. He buried it in his hands as all awareness of what was happening around him slipped away. The opponent, exploiting Adam’s temporary disability, clamped a hand over the back of his skull, fingers tangled in the mohawk, drove him down the aisle toward the far back of the bus, and smashed his head against the vehicle’s rear window.

In the same instant his forehead collided with the glass, Adam snapped upright in his bed with a violent lurch.

Soaked through with sweat, he tried to bolt from the narrow bed shoved against the back wall of his cell, but the sheets caught in his legs, sent him crashing to the floor, hard. While he lay there in the cold, half-bound by the twisted blanket, he almost choked on his own breath as a hoarse, wild scream tore out of his veiny throat.

‘Peter! I didn’t kill him! It wasn’t me! Peter! It wasn’t me!’

Not a whole minute had passed when a correctional officer leaned his gut against the metal bars. He was completely bald, his beard so disheveled it looked like someone had glued an animal to his face.

‘Styles! Calm the fuck down, or I’ll throw your sorry ass back where you were rotting last time,’ the guard warned the young inmate in a low growl.

‘But it wasn’t me! Let me out of here! Please! I didn’t do anything!’ Adam yelled, all the while looking at the brawny officer with begging, tear-filled eyes.

The bearded man turned and keyed the squealing radio on his shoulder. ‘Sergeant Dashinsky? Bobson here. Styles has gone off the fuckin’ rails. What do you want me to do, boss?’

‘Again?’ A cracked sigh escaped the small speaker. ‘Take him to the hole, then. Let him cool off for a few days,’ the distorted voice on the other end of the radio answered. A dry snicker followed. ‘And don’t call me boss. We’re not in the mob here.’

About half a minute after the order was issued, two more officers arrived, entered Adam’s cell, and, after putting him in handcuffs, yanked him out to a separate one.

Solitary confinement. The hole.

‘I didn’t kill him! I’m innocent! You gotta believe me!’ Styles screamed as the officers dragged him down the corridor.

The other inmates were egging Adam on, urging him to try and free himself. Most of them were lifers who would never walk out of prison anyway. They just wanted to be provided with a bit of free entertainment at Adam’s expense.

‘You bastards! You filthy sons of whores!’ an old man howled from his cell upon seeing the officers passing by his cell. ‘You-’

‘Shut up, Kenner, or you’re gonna join him!’ one of the guards said over his shoulder, never slowing his pace.

Henry Kenner, known among the inmates as “Grampa,” lifted his hands and retreated compliantly to the back of his cell, where he sat quietly on his bed, his face drawn tight with anger, ready to explode.

‘I swear, I didn’t kill him!’ Adam yelled again as he tried his best to break free from the correctional officers’ iron grip, but to no avail. His throat was barely able to rasp out another scream.

‘Right, right. We know that, Styles. You’ve told us a hundred times already. Now shut the fuck up!’ Officer Bobson said as he followed behind, then turned to one of the other guards. ‘I can’t stand his fucking yapping. Always the same shit with this guy…’

Bobson opened the door. Another officer uncuffed Adam and shoved him inside his new cell, after which all of them headed back to the control booth, where mellow jazz and news about a presidential election drifted faintly from the radio.

When he somewhat regained his composure, Adam sat on the bare, cold floor and started banging the back of his head fitfully against the painted cinder-block wall. The cell was scarcely larger than a horse stall. He never knew how much time he would have to spend in solitary – that was up to the disciplinary board. The shortest stretch he remembered was one day. The longest, three weeks.

Patience was his only ally now. He knew he could not count on the officers’ goodwill – that was never an option. They were not there to accommodate any of the inmates, least of all the disgraceful troublemaker they saw him as.

Once more, Adam Styles would remain in the secluded cell, left there until he no longer spent his breath trying to convince the correctional officers and his fellow inmates of his alleged innocence.

THE END

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Chapter 12

The Settlement

Adam had already spent close to half an hour on the cold streets of this unknown, windy city – pretending to be patient, then checking his gun in frightened haste. But he consoled himself with the thought that everything was set, tight as a drum. Along with his two new friends, he moved into their prearranged positions; the two young dealers hid in the alleyway, while Adam stood on the corner near the overflowing heap of trash.

He was far from home – which was empty beyond repair – and almost boxed in by dirty, towering brick walls. Even if he changed his mind at the last second, he’d have nowhere to run. The idea of meeting Dash again had left his mouth completely dry – the very man who had imprisoned him in the most inhumane conditions, unfit even for animals, and taken the lives of the people who meant the world to him. That man would soon arrive and meet him. Styles had thought that avenging his mother, his grandfather, and his longtime friend would be a walk in the park, the most natural way to satisfy his sense of justice. But now, so close to this inevitable, inexorable encounter, it felt more like attempting to hold a house steady with his bare hands during a major earthquake.

The memories of everything that had happened to him as of late challenged his vengeful resolve. They gave him the impression that time was running backward, as though someone were about to tie his hands and feet, shove him into a car trunk, and dump him back into that filthy hole for good.

He looked at the clocks on the white tower.

One fifteen. They’re late. Much too late.

Adam’s eyes shifted from the tower to a slowly approaching black car. The paint gleamed flawlessly, even under the weak light of the sparsely placed streetlamps, and the grille resembled the gate of a baroque cathedral. The tires were quiet and nearly as wide as his own body.

Only one car. Though the thought unsettled him, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. He scanned the rooftops – no snipers in sight.

The car rolled to a stop about twenty feet away from him. The driver killed the lights and shut off the engine. Flabbergasted as he was, Styles found himself wondering whether they were going to spend more than just a moment with him. But he’d be an idiot to think that they had come for any other reason than to get rid of him. He had to be careful; he knew better now than to trust Dash and expect any kindness on his part.

Dash was the first to step out of the car, and repulsive though the crime lord was to him, Adam had fully expected to see him. The slicked-back hair, the round sunglasses, the black leather coat. Dash looked just as he had the day Adam first met him. Yet even in his wildest calculations would he have failed to predict the presence of the person now standing beside the boss.

Mocking grins set upon Dash’s and Carolyn’s faces when they saw Adam standing like a lost lamb in the middle of the dark street, and they looked at him like butchers ready to begin their work.

But despite her predatory physiognomy, Adam was unable to ignore her penetrating sapphire eyes. All this time, all he had ever wanted was to take her in his arms, tell her how much he loved and missed her, and say how sorry he was for the whole mess. He believed they could leave the crime-ridden past behind and start over, working toward a new and better future. But she was now collaborating with the man who meant to end his life. Everything he’d believed collapsed. All his plans had been built but on sand, and nothing was true anymore.

‘Carolyn?’ Adam asked. His lips almost quivered. ‘What are you doing here?’

But before she could ever respond, the sudden slam of a door cut her off. The driver was already making his way around the car. Adam would have recognized that mug anywhere. It was undoubtedly him – the mohawk, the thick scar spanning the side of his face, and that disgusting, cocky grin twisting his features. Peter’s killer.

Adam felt as if he was about to faint at the sight of him. The dizziness intensified, and he grew more and more light-headed. A dense fog seemed to descend and envelop him, one that only he could perceive. It felt like being underwater. Colors began to come apart. His surroundings pulsed, then broke into pieces, only to mesh together again.

Apart from the visual confusion, he heard a recognizable, fuzzy sound.

Speech.

Someone was trying to talk to him. He was unable to discern to whom the voice he heard belonged, though it sounded hauntingly familiar.

Then it clicked. It was the same distorted voice from Peter’s funeral and from the shack. It told him that Carolyn wasn’t Carolyn, that the pretty girlie he loved like a baby was nothing more than a fighmaj.

Is nothing real anymore? Adam asked himself.

When the fog thinned and his head cleared, he noticed that Carolyn was no longer standing there. In her place was someone else entirely, a woman as different from her as water from fire. Her hair was short, black. The eyes deep and so dark. Only the smile remained, sharp and calculating.

She was not the woman that he remembered, the one he knew and loved. No. That woman, like Peter, was no more.

The mohawk pressed the woman’s body against his and began kissing her with a fervent passion. When he pulled away, he stared Adam straight in the eye. An appetite for bloodshed and slaughter burned in his gaze. Adam had seen it before; it was the same look when he’d ruthlessly killed his only friend.

Dash came closer. His gait slow and steady. Each step reverberated against the cobblestones like an orchestral hit. Even the wind, so cold and importunate a second ago, had stopped, as though the city itself retreated and was waiting, aware of the moment’s solemn gravity.

‘I will impart to you a certain truth, Adam,’ Dash said and drew on his cigar. ‘I have presided over your kind before. And you are far from the first to challenge my authority.’

‘But I’ll surely be the last to do so,’ Adam said and spat on the ground.

‘We will see about that.’ Dash flicked his cigar aside without breaking eye contact with his former worker from behind his round sunglasses.

‘“We”?’ Styles asked. ‘I don’t think so, Dash. This ends with only one of us alive. And it will not be you.’

Dash’s henchmen froze. Their heads snapped toward a rustle across the street. As they cautiously moved to explore the source of that curious sound, Max and Raphael erupted from their hideout and opened fire on the couple without hesitation or pause. They sprinted forward until they took cover behind the car.

Dash and Styles ducked low and watched the gunfight as though they were part of a theater audience, waiting for the play’s inevitable climax to arrive.

The mohawk and his girl didn’t wait to raise their submachine guns and fired back, aiming almost at random, relying more on instinct than precision in the hope that chance would do the rest.

But the deadly bullet ballet tapered off when the woman collapsed from a headshot. Taking advantage of her accomplice’s momentary shock, Raphael shot the scarred mohawk twice in the chest. He frowned, trying to lift his gun one last time, but he too fell limply to the ground.

Raphael chuckled under his breath. ‘Until death do us part,’ he said when he saw the man was dead as well.

‘Sweet dreams, kids,’ Max said, stepping past the bodies of their fallen enemies.

Dash bolted the moment the first body hit the ground. Adam grabbed for his former boss’s coat, but his reaction came too late. Dash ran with everything he had. He drew his revolver and fired blindly behind him, his arm locked straight. Adam was lucky enough to avoid the frantic volley of bullets coming his way, but even his luck had to run out.

One of Dash’s bullets tore through Adam’s left arm but the rage boiling inside him made him ignore the pain. His mind was presently possessed by two urges alone: vengeance and domination. He was so close to achieving them. He wanted it so bad he could taste it.

Adam knew he could not rush it. Closing the distance too quickly could get him shot at close range. He was also trying to maintain a safe distance to conserve his own energy, all the while waiting for Dash to finally run out of breath and bullets.

When his patience was finally rewarded, Adam broke into a much faster run. As the distance between them finally narrowed, Styles flung himself forward and hurled himself at the old fugitive, driving him down onto the damp asphalt. Adam grabbed him and pulled him around. The blows came fast and decisive, one after another, a pop, a crack marking each punch to the mobster’s terror-stricken face. The force behind the rising and falling fists seemed to come not only from his muscles, but from some deeper, darker place inside his heart and soul. His eyes and mouth stayed wide open as he feasted on his long-awaited revenge.

Max and Raphael caught up with Adam about a minute later. They struggled against his full weight as they dragged him away, trying to prevent him from battering Dash’s face any further, which by now was entirely bruised and swollen. Adam’s manic and unstoppable fury had rendered the old boss completely unrecognizable.

‘Fuck, man. You took care of him, all right,’ Max said, his jaw tightened as he took in Roman Dash’s mangled appearance.

Panting, Styles said, ‘I’m not done with him.’ His eyes fixed hard on Dash. ‘Not by a fucking long shot.’

‘No!’ Dash yelled hoarsely. ‘Please! Do you want money? I can give you more than you could ever count, or spend. Please, Adam. I implore you, spare me. I will give you anything you desire.’ His eyes shone with tears. The words came out thick and distorted through his swollen lips and shattered teeth.

Adam looked at Raphael, and he just seemed to know. He handed over the gun lost during the chase, and Adam’s index finger settled lightly on the trigger.

‘How about your death? You took something from me that I will never be able to get back,’ Adam said and aimed the gun at his former boss’s forehead.

‘No! Please,’ Dash said, forcing the words out through ruined lips. ‘Adam, whatever you may think, I came to you in peace. I give you my word…’

Adam crouched close and whispered, ‘And you will rest in peace.’

The bullet tore through Dash’s disfigured head, shattering the upper portion into a thousand tiny fragments of blood and bone that rained down onto the asphalt, creating a grotesque decoration around what was left of the dead man’s jaw and neck that ultimately crowned Adam’s vengeance.

Roman Dash was dead.

The score was settled.

But it was far from over. The shots were loud enough for anyone in the surrounding buildings to hear, and the tenants – though long accustomed to this kind of violence in their neighborhood – could always call the police, fearing for their safety.

‘What did you do with those two clowns?’ Adam inquired about Dash’s helpers.

‘We’ve put them in the bags they kept in the car and dumped them into the trunk,’ Max said.

‘Good. You got one more for him?’ Adam said, nodding toward Dash’s body.

‘Yeah, right here.’ Raphael held up the big black body bag for him to see.

They heaved Dash’s zipped-up body into the car’s trunk and let it join the other corpses.

With the bodies entombed in the car’s trunk, the victorious trio traveled some fifty miles beyond the city and threw the cadavers into a lake ringed with tall elm and maple trees. Max was urinating beneath one of them.

‘You’re sure they won’t resurface?’ Adam, still groggy, asked his friend in a low voice. From the outset, he hadn’t been all that confident in the success of their covert endeavor.

‘Absolutely, bro!’ Raphael shouted. ‘Max and I put some sand in the bags while you snoozed. They’ll be heavier that way. Besides, you’re standing by one of the deepest lakes there is. Those suckers will turn into fish food in no time. They’ll never see daylight again. At least not from above the surface, if that makes sense…’

Adam sighed as he watched the body bags slowly sinking into the murky water, the frail moonlight trembling on its surface.

‘I can’t believe they’re dead, man. All of them. Why did Peter have to die? ‘Cause he didn’t live up to Dash’s standards? Just like Bobby.’ Adam shook and hung his head. ‘I mean, we used to be tight as shit on every job. Dash was un-fucking-touchable. And what’s left of him now? Bones under water, know what I mean?’

Raphael put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. ‘Look, man, shit happens. All the time. But think about it, at least you got rid of all the assholes in your life. From here on out, it only gets better.’

Adam shrugged. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘Just saying. Anyway, you good?’ Raphael asked.

‘Yeah. I’ll get over it.’ Adam spotted Max heading back toward them. ‘All right, let’s get the hell outta here,’ he ordered.

The three friends entered the stolen car, intent on getting back to the dealers’ apartment. Just before dawn, they drove through a city whose streets had once again been sprinkled with blood.

END OF CHAPTER 12

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Chapter 11

To Arms!

The sun filled the apartment with its warm yet ephemeral rays, covering each dusty object in the room with a thin gilded veil. The sun, Adam thought. The moon, the sun. Night and day. Dash... freedom?

Max, Raphael, and their guest sat at the living-room table, debating how best to approach the delicate business of getting rid of Dash and his crew. They were sure that a man as powerful and influential as Roman Dash would never come alone. Adam had seen, firsthand, how many people worked for him and had no doubt he would bring at least a dozen of them to hunt him down.

Max finished his coffee and asked, ‘So the question is, how will he know that we – or you – are here, in this exact city?’

‘Hard to say,’ Adam said, scratching his bald temple. He still had to get used to the new haircut. ‘Maybe Bobby told him where he’d dropped me off. But I can’t really be sure about that.’

‘So how do you wanna find out?’

Adam hummed for a moment and tapped his index finger against his pursed lips. ‘I guess I’d have to call him.’

Raphael’s next question went off like a bundle of dynamite in the cramped, airless room. ‘And what are you gonna tell him? “Hey, Mr. Dash! Can Bobby come get me? I’m at my friends’ place, not far from where your lapdog left me tied up. What friends? You should know them. They used to push for Malagassi. Oh, and by the way, I’m gonna have to take you out for what you and your clowns did to me in that shack!”’

‘I don’t know what I’ll tell him! Not yet… But right now, we don’t have any other options. You’ve got a phone here?’

‘Catch,’ Max called as he tossed Adam his phone.

Adam was about to dial the number when he suddenly stopped, as if he lost control of his body for a brief instant.

‘What’s going on?’ Max asked, his eyes moving back and forth between Adam and the phone he was holding.

‘I gotta call my mom and her old man before I take care of this. I know I gotta deal with Dash, but I don’t know if I’ll make it... or see my folks again.’

Max nodded. ‘Just make it quick.’

Adam called his grandfather first, but no one picked up.

Styles suspected the worst. He felt overpowered by a sudden heat, to the point where he was uncomfortable in his own body – shaking, hot and cold all at once. Bobby – and Dash by extension – knew about his grandfather, Ward McGale, and how much he meant to him. Would they really be that cold-blooded as to kill an innocent member of his family? And at his age?

He decided to call his mother next. Someone picked up after a few rings.

‘Yeah?’

‘Who is this?’ Adam snapped. The voice was rough, male, and completely unfamiliar. ‘Who am I talking to?’

‘Your worst nightmare, dickhead,’ the man on the other end growled.

The words hit him like a ten-ton hammer. It was the very same voice he had heard just before being struck in Rector’s shack. And yet he knew he’d heard it somewhere else, too – he just couldn’t place it.

‘What the fuck… Where’s my mother?’ Adam shouted at the device. ‘What have you done to her?’

‘That bitch made a big mistake reporting you missing.’

‘You’re fuckin’ dead! Whoever you are! Dead!’

Max and Raphael froze. They stared at Adam, trying to make sense of his rambling.

‘You will pay me for this, you fucking-’

‘Now, now… do not hang up just yet, Adam.’

Another voice. This one he knew for certain. He struggled to draw a single breath. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead, and he had to use both hands to steady the phone.

‘Why did you do this?’ Adam asked, his lips trembling – not because of fear, but because something deep inside him broke when he heard his former employer.

‘Me?’ Dash let out a throaty, amused laugh. ‘My dear Adam, I assure you, I have never laid a hand on anyone in my life. Not once!’

‘Right. You just give the orders.’

‘Adam, I am utterly shattered to admit that I do not recognize you at all. Have you been well? Or are you resigning from my employ?’

‘Effective immediately. We’re done.’

‘In any event, I would rather not see our association conclude in such an impersonal fashion. Let us meet one final time, shall we? I could enlighten you as to who truly bore responsibility for the death of your mother, your grandfather… and your friend, Peter. In fact, I may even bring the feisty fellow with me. And as for your absence, I know exactly who was keeping you confined under that snug little cabin in the woods.’

‘I think I have a good idea who threw me down there,’ Adam said. ‘You wanna see me? Tell me where and I’ll be there ‘cause I’m done with your shit!’

He could hear Dash breathing. Slowly, measured.

‘Let us meet somewhere familiar to you. The street where you were discarded, perhaps. I am confident that your memory of it remains quite vivid.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow. One in the morning. I trust that will suffice.’

After a brief silence, Adam asked, ‘Is Bobby there?’

‘Bobby?’ Dash laughed again. ‘Bobby had never learned to follow my orders, after all. He is not… around, one might say.’

Adam hung up. Even the outside traffic seemed to quiet down.

‘And?’ Raphael said. ‘What did you find out?’

‘It was them, all right.’ Styles sighed. ‘They locked me up. They killed my mom. Grampa. Bobby. Peter too.’

Raphael turned to Max and to Adam again. He asked quietly, ‘Bobby and Peter? You’re sure?’

‘Sure as shit. Dash knows the guy who killed Peter. Fucker told me he could introduce us.’

‘But how?’ Max asked. ‘He’s gotta be in jail by now.’

‘Maybe Dash bailed him out?’ Raphael suggested.

Adam threw his head back, squinting. ‘Bailed him out?’

‘Yeah.’ Raphael shrugged. ‘He’s got the money for it. Besides, enemy of my enemy, right?’

‘That would make sense,’ Adam said. ‘Dash needed a new hitman after me and Bobby.’

He stood and went to the window, where the sun was slowly swallowed by the plump clouds. Looking at the rails, the parked cars, the overthrown trash cans, he asked himself how could he have let things go this far? He should have known better, but who had he been then to know anything? From what great wisdom was he to draw inspiration? Could a blind man advise a painter? A deaf man a composer? He had been entirely unfit to counsel himself, and yet it was he who now had to undo the mess he was in. Adam shook his head. There was no point in scolding himself now.

‘And what else did Dash say?’ Max asked.

‘They’ll be here. Waiting for me. Right where Bobby dumped me.’

‘Dash knew. So it was Bobby,’ Raphael said. ‘He was the one who dragged you out of that hole.’

‘And that’s what got him killed.’ Adam wiped his palms down his face. ‘Dash is pissed. And he’s gonna bring a shitload of ’em, all armed to the teeth, no doubt about it. But I have to be there; I have to get rid of that son of a bitch once and for all. For my friends. For my family.’

‘Good luck,’ Max said, already halfway to the kitchen.

‘Max!’ Raphael called after him. ‘What are you… he can get us the stuff!’

‘What’s the matter?’ Adam asked, looking alternately at Max and Raphael from under a heavy frown. ‘I thought you were gonna help me.’

Max shook his head, smiling as though he’d just been told a bad joke. ‘Listen, man. I’m not gonna put my ass on the line for spare change, you know. No way. Have a blast. But I’m out.’

‘The stash I told you about last night?’ Adam said. ‘If we pull this off, it’s yours. All of it. And I wasn’t bullshitting. I know exactly where it is – and it’s big.’

Max folded his arms. ‘How big?’

‘Last I heard? Six hundred pounds.’

‘Fuck me!’ Raphael shouted. ‘That’s like stumbling onto the eternal snow city of El Nevado!’

Adam tilted his head. ‘Worth a shot?’

‘Shit, now you got my attention,’ Max said and sat back down.

‘So, what’s the play here?’ Raphael asked, rubbing his palms against each other.

‘I need to see your city,’ Adam said. ‘And I need something I can draw on.’

Max unlocked his phone and opened a navigation app, the screen blooming with streets and pale blocks. Raphael returned from the next room with a pen and an empty sheet of paper.

‘All right,’ Adam said while pinching the screen. ‘This neighborhood’s still the same? Anything changed around here?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Max replied.

‘Actually,’ Raphael said and pointed at the map, ‘the city did some roadwork around here. Far from us, though. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Good. Now show me where we are,’ Styles commanded. Max bent over the phone and pointed to their street on the screen. From there, vaguely recalling the route, Adam traced an invisible line between the payphone and the spot where Bobby had left him. ‘This is where Dash wants to meet me.’

‘That’s a good spot,’ Max said. ‘See this line here? That’s a blind alley. There are probably some dumpsters at the end, doors along the sides: good cover, easy escape. You were probably… here. That’s why nobody noticed you.’

Adam nodded. ‘You sure know a lot about this town.’

‘You learn pretty fast with the police on your ass.’

‘That’s what she said. Anyway, that’s good news. Good news…’ Adam thought of Dash as he beheld the neighborhood’s layout. The idea of killing him for what he’d done to him and his family filled him with dread and a reinvigorating energy at the same time. He began sketching the streets onto the page. ‘All right, I’ll stand on the corner, near the pile of trash, and wait for them there. You guys stay sharp in the alley.’

Max and Raphael nodded.

Adam frowned. ‘You said you had some guns, right?’

‘Yeah, we’ve got a few,’ Max said.

Adam didn’t hesitate to ask, ‘What are we talking about, and how much?’

Raphael leaned forward. ‘Let’s see. Battering rams. Encrypted walkie-talkies. Secure comms. Nines, rifles, AKs, grenades.’ He shook his head without trying to conceal his smile. ‘What are you, some kinda gun nerd? We got guns. Nothing fancy – one squeeze, one answer. They shoot, and they kill. That’s it.’

‘Cool,’ Adam said. ‘If they kill us, that’s on you. Not like anyone’s gonna give a shit by then.’

‘Each of us gets ten bullets,’ Max put in.

Adam gave him a sharp look and smiled dryly. ‘Let’s just hope there’ll be less than thirty of ‘em.’

After having examined the guns, Adam, Max, and Raphael left the apartment and set out for the place where they were to meet Dash, walking all the way with the quiet urgency of men who knew what awaited them. The unexpected but light rain falling from the low, sorrowful sky did not hinder them from reconnoitering the site of their ominous rendezvous, and looking for a way that would serve as a fallback escape.

The cloudy sky was bright for now. The evening still remained an unfulfilled promise. But it would not be long before a cold and sleepless night settled over Adam’s world, and the moment of truth would at long last arrive.

END OF CHAPTER 11

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Chapter 10

A Second Chance

If ever asked, Adam wouldn’t have known how to define luck, yet he was sure as hell he had a share of it.

His heart was beating like a drum. He lay curled up in a cramped, dark space again, but this one was different. It was much warmer inside. An engine purred steadily close by. And he was tossed about whenever the road gave way.

He had no doubt as to where he was.

His wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape, and a burlap sack covered his head with a rope cinched around his neck to keep it in place. Not too tight, though; he could still breathe. That only confirmed what he had already suspected – they needed him alive.

Adam stopped thrashing about and decided to listen for any exchange of words in the front seats. Maybe that could help him pick out who his captors were, if they were anyone he even knew. Or at least what they were after.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear anyone. Only the faint murmur of the radio reached his ears. The hosts were rambling about a presidential candidate who’d just won some election somewhere.

About an hour into his wakefulness, the car finally came to a halt, though the engine kept its low growl. Someone slammed the door so hard it rocked the whole vehicle for a moment. The footsteps, heavy and deliberate, grew louder as the mysterious driver approached Adam’s cramped cell.

The driver opened the trunk and heaved him upward, gripping his jacket with one hand and his pants with the other.

What’s gonna happen now? he wondered. Either they’d let him live or dump him off a bridge into a river so deep he’d never be found again.

The stranger threw his captive against the uneven surface of the cobblestone street.

‘Let me go!’ Adam yelled, his voice cracking. ‘Hey! Don’t fucking leave me here like this, man!’ He felt the driver yank him up by the crusted collar near his face.

‘Cut that shit,’ the man said. His words were quiet but firm. Adam knew that voice all too well. ‘They had other plans for you, but I figured I owed you for what you did for me. Still do.’

‘Wha-’ Adam couldn’t finish what he was meant to say. His rescuer cut him off with a sharp kick to the stomach.

After the kick, all Adam could hear was someone’s sprinting toward the car, a door slammed in haste, and driving off.

Silence.

He was only thinking about how to get rid of his bindings. He felt a terrible urge to free himself and, in a matter of seconds, came up with a plan.

He knew he had to start with his hands. Inch by inch, he dragged himself to the curb and ground the tape against it until the fibers finally surrendered. For a long time, the harsh rasping was the only noise he could hear, but then, suddenly, his arms were free. That allowed him to pull the smelly sack off his head without much trouble.

Now the legs.

There was no way for Adam to tear the tape around his ankles the same way he had with his wrists, so he crawled to a toppled trash can nearby and fished out a piece of broken glass. With his new transparent blade, he cut himself free at the ankles, and ripped off the loose pieces still hanging from his wrists and feet.

Even so, as if purely by instinct, he leaned back against a trash can and, with his eyes closed, drew a deep breath. Bobby had dragged his ass out of that hole, he thought. That much was clear. He had saved him from something worse, but what? And why? Adam shook his head; maybe this wasn’t the time to think about it. It was dark, cold, and he needed to get moving before some random shitheads jumped him and tore him a new one.

Free though he was, he didn’t know what to do with his long-awaited freedom. He knew he had to go somewhere, but where? He didn’t even know where he was, and had no way to figure it out. So he started walking, letting the world throw whatever scraps of information it was willing to give up.

Wandering the dimly lit streets, with endless ranks of towering apartment buildings rising on either side of him, Adam didn’t encounter a single person on his way into the unknown. Over the following half an hour he trudged through the concrete labyrinth, quietly hoping some idea would rise up and tell him what to do next.

At some point, he broke his monotonous route and turned right. From there, he saw a white tower in the distance, each of its giant clocks agreeing it was almost eleven.

Walking down the street, he noticed two people in a window of an apartment building. A married couple? Lovers, perhaps. They were shouting, their frantic gestures charged with urgency and accusation. Adam stopped, trying to make out what they were quarreling about, but all he heard were indecipherable screams mangled by a blaring TV. The man was stocky and balding, wearing a white tank top. The woman was slender, pale, with short red hair. She was now taking the lashes of a thick brown belt. Suddenly, the man looked out the window. When he spotted Adam watching, he rushed to pull the blinds shut. Once their privacy had been secured, even louder screams followed, though apparently not loud enough for any of the other tenants to bother checking.

Adam decided to move on, worried the guy might storm outside and give him the same kind of treatment. On any other day, he could have taken him out like the trash he was, but now he had to tend to himself, lick his wounds.

Only when he reached the end of the street did Adam realize he’d been walking into a dead end. He was about to turn back when a phone started ringing. In the night’s heavy silence, the shrill tone felt almost violent in his ears.

After a few more rings, he decided to follow the sound farther down the street. It came from a payphone bolted to the wall. As he reached for the receiver, he felt someone tap him on his shoulder.

‘Get lost. This one’s for me,’ a young man said. He hadn’t shaved in at least three days, and his hair looked like it hadn’t seen scissors in far longer. He wore a brown sports jacket over a black and white striped T-shirt.

Adam stood there and watched the bearded guy talk on the phone. He caught only a handful of words: “yeah,” “okay,” “five,” “usual,” “’bout a week”.

The young stranger had thrown Adam the occasional glance during his brief call, but once he hung up, he scanned him from head to toe. He stepped in so close to Adam’s face that their steamy breaths mingled in the cold air.

‘Haven’t I seen you around before?’ The young bearded man asked.

‘Don’t think so.’

‘You sure? ’Cause I could swear I’ve seen you somewhere…’ He took a look over his shoulder, then faced Adam again and whispered, ‘Didn’t you buy something from me?’

‘No,’ Styles retorted, his voice firm and raspy.

The stranger took a step back and slapped his own thighs. ‘Fuck, of course! It’s you, man! Your name’s Adam, right? Adam S… something!’

Adam grabbed the guy by the collar. ‘How the hell do you know my name?’

‘Whoa! Ease up, bro!’ the man said as he tried to pull free of Adam’s vise-like grip. ‘You ran away from home or something, right?’

‘Ran away?’ Adam snorted, releasing the collar. ‘I got kidnapped…’ He held the guy’s gaze for a second or two before asking, ‘But how would you know about that, anyway?’

‘They showed your photo on the news – one of those missing-people segments. What was it called again… ah, whatever.’ The stranger waved his hand and winced. ‘Bro, you look and smell like shit. If you want, you can come up to my place and grab a meal, get cleaned up. It’s right over there. Unless you want sanitation dragging your corpse off the sidewalk tomorrow. Don’t expect me to braid your hair, though. What do you say?’

Adam said nothing. Could he trust the guy? He wasn’t wrong. If he stayed on the street, he’d be dead by daybreak. Follow him to his apartment and he’d either get killed, or get the chance to freshen up.

A choice between dying for sure and maybe dying ain’t no choice at all, he figured.

Without saying a word, Adam nodded and went after the stranger, this “friend” whose name he didn’t even know. What options did he have? Right now, that dude was his only way to get back on his feet. A second chance that would not come his way twice.

The apartment was on the fourth floor, and the hallway pitch dark. The stranger knew the way by heart, unlike Styles. He followed, feeling for each step, stiffening every time another rose out of the black.

But their tedious journey had finally come to an end, and they were facing the apartment’s door. The man in the brown jacket rattled a bunch of keys before shoving them back into his pocket and hammered on the door, remembering his roommate was inside.

‘Open up, it’s me!’ he shouted.

A man about the same age as the bearded stranger stood in the door frame.

‘Come on in… guys?’ the roommate said, noticing that his friend wasn’t the only one standing in the hallway.

They led Adam straight into their living room. In the middle there stood a low wooden table, covered with old magazine pages of motorbikes and sex ads.

Must be their girlfriends, Adam thought, trying to suppress a smirk.

He let his eyes roam around the room: a pile of gangster movies gathered dust on a shelf, a guitar leaned against an amp in another corner, cigarette butts piled in an ashtray.

‘Take a seat, man,’ one of the roommates offered.

Adam sank into an armchair beside the gray couch.

The man Adam had met by the payphone introduced himself as Raphael. His friend’s name was Max. He was about Raphael’s age, with short black hair, and small, close-set eyes that gave him an amicable look despite his bulky physique.

‘Meetcha,’ Adam mumbled and nodded brusquely.

Raphael nudged Max and pointed at their guest. ‘Remember this guy?’

Max just stared at Adam but couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘We saw him online. That missing-people segment?’

‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Max leaned closer. He was studying Adam’s face like a doctor looking at an infection. ‘It’s fucking him, all right. Where did you find him?’

‘He was standing by the payphone. Didn’t recognize him till I was turning back.’

‘You can talk to me, you know. I’m sitting right here,’ Adam cut in.

‘Oh, hey, sorry,’ Raphael said, then pressed his lips together.

‘So they really showed me on the news, huh?’ Adam dragged his hands down his face.

‘Well, I wouldn’t make it up now, would I?’ Raphael said, his shoulders raised in a shrug.

‘That’s so fucked up,’ Adam muttered. ‘But it’s good news, too.’

‘How do you mean?’ Max asked.

‘It means they haven’t done anything to my family.’ Adam let out a breath.

‘And who are… “they”?’ Raphael inquired.

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Adam waved it off, already getting to his feet. ‘I have to go back.’

‘Wait, wait! Hold on!’ said Raphael as he got up with Adam, his arms already outstretched. ‘You can’t just walk out like that.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘You know what we do?’ Raphael lifted a small plastic bag of white powder, shaking it lightly beside his face. ‘And we gotta know what kind of shit you’re bringing to our block. A guy looking like you? On the news? Kidnapped? We gotta make sure nobody was tailing you.’

‘Yeah,’ Max agreed. ‘Last thing we need is the cops or another crew sniffing around. Sit your ass down, bro. Let’s talk. We just wanna know if your problem ain’t about to become our problem, all right?’

Adam sighed and sat down. Max and Raphael followed suit. He rested his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers as he intended to get into the spirit of things.

‘It all started with Dash. He runs his own thing. Small crew, but serious power.’

Max and Raphael shared a heavy glance before turning back to Adam.

‘I met him at my friend Peter’s funeral. The guy comes up to me and says Peter used to work for him. Then he’s offering me work. I did a couple of hits for him, whatever he needed.’ He let out a short, humorless laugh. ‘Funny thing is, Peter never said a word about running with Dash. Anyway, during one of the jobs, someone hits me in the head, and next thing I know, I’m waking up locked up under that shack. No idea how long I was down there. Lost track of time completely.’

‘What was it, two weeks, right?’ Raphael asked.

‘Yeah, two or three weeks they said,’ Max added. ‘They showed you about a week ago.’

Adam shook his head in disbelief. ‘After that somebody shows up and hits me – again – before I even know what’s happening. Next thing I remember, I’m waking up in a trunk. Sack over my head, wrists and ankles all tied up n’ shit. Once out, I managed to free myself, and I just kept walking until I ran into you.’ Adam pointed his chin at Raphael.

Raphael snorted. ‘Wow… some fucking shit, huh? And you got no idea who did that to you?’

‘I tried to figure it out a bunch of times while I was locked up, but I couldn’t come up with anything. However, whoever dumped me out of that trunk told me I should’ve been dead already, but he was too grateful for something I’d done for him.’

‘And who would that be?’ Raphael asked.

‘I used to do all the jobs together with this guy Bobby. One time we had to take out these two guys dealing behind our backs? Anyway, they shot Bobby in the forearm, but I dropped them before they could finish him.’

‘So now we know.’ Max nodded. ‘We know who we’re looking for.’

‘Question.’ Adam said. ‘I saw the looks on your faces when I mentioned Dash. You guys know him?’

‘Yeah, we know him, all right,’ Raphael mumbled under his nose and crossed his arms. ‘We used to run with a guy named Tico. Look, we were just corner boys, but Tico was our connect. He used to bring us the product from Malagassi, you know. A while back, Malagassi set up a meeting with Dash and his people. Some kinda business talk, I guess. Anyway, shit went sideways real fast and everyone starts shooting. Tico was there too. Wrong place, wrong time. Dash dropped him with the rest. So we’re basically running on fumes now, just selling whatever we got left.

‘And it wasn’t even Tico’s beef,’ Max added. ‘He got offed just ‘cause he was standing next to the wrong dudes. We lost a connect and a friend. We grew up with Tico. Same sandbox, same stupid-ass dreams.’

‘So now we’ve both got reasons to look for Dash,’ Adam said. ‘I know where he keeps a lot of his product. Enough to make you serious money. You help me find Dash, and I help you get it. What do you say?’

‘Shit, we’re in!’ Raphael said. ‘At this point, any-fucking-thing helps. As I said, we’re almost out of stuff to sell, so…’

Adam shook hands with them to seal their deal. He then asked, ‘Can I ask you favor?’

‘Sure. What do you need?’

‘You got a mirror? I know I look like shit, but I wanna see for myself.’

‘Uh, yeah.’ Raphael pointed to his left. ‘Bathroom’s right over there, man. The mirror’s above the sink. Can’t miss it.’

Adam got up and staggered toward the indicated room. He clutched the sink and closed his eyes.

After taking a deep breath, he finally separated his eyelids.

He wasn’t sure he was looking at himself. He knew the view wouldn’t be nice, but this was worse than he’d expected.

Who is this? he thought as he looked at his reflection. Who the hell have I become?

He had never seen himself in such a wretched state before. His hair, stiff and discolored, fell over his pale, gray-tinged face and stuck to the side of his beard. The eyes were red, sunk deep in dark rings, but it was the look in them that stunned the renegade observer. It was the gaze of someone wronged, bitter, and unsteady. His beard had grown long and uneven, leaving one bare patch on his cheek where the old, bulging scar showed, the one he’d gotten from that asshole at the club who’d tried to hit on Carolyn.

Carolyn…

He had to see her. Talk to her. Kiss her. He hoped the chance to do all that would come soon.

His pants and shirt were soiled and just downright filthy. Dirt, dust, shit, puke, and that disgusting fucking soup were all ground into his rags.

Max entered the bathroom.

‘Yo, since you’re already here, feel free to take a shower. No offense, but you reek, bro. Towels are over there. I’ll bring you some clean clothes in a minute.’

Adam wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to clean himself properly.

The hot water felt comforting against his bruised, emaciated body. He stood still until the water turned almost completely cold. It felt liberating to finally relax and stand upright after so much time spent in those brutal and inhumane conditions.

The herbal shower gel left a fresh, almost medical scent on his body. He got dressed in the black jeans and the white polo shirt Max had brought him and went back to the living room.

‘Look at him,’ Max said. ‘A new man.’

‘But there’s one more thing,’ Raphael added, his voice more solemn than that of Max. ‘You need to cut your hair and get rid of the beard. You don’t want anyone recognizing you, right?’

‘Not really,’ Adam retorted.

‘Razors and shaving cream are on top of the washer,’ Max said. ‘They’re mine, but just use whatever you need.’

‘Thanks. I owe you guys – big time,’ Adam said, already heading back into the bathroom for another ten or fifteen minutes.

‘All right. Hair next. How’d you use to wear it?’ Raphael asked.

Adam shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not too long. Same as now, I guess.’

His bearded friend thought for a second. ‘You gotta look way different. Different enough that your old crowd doesn’t recognize you, know what I mean? How about a Mohawk?’

‘Fuck off,’ Styles snapped. ‘I’ll look like a fucking clown.’

‘Easy there, bud. It won’t be two feet high like those punks wear ‘em. It’ll be short. Besides, you’ll only have keep it until we get our hands on Dash.’

Adam put his hands on his hips and let out a long sigh. ‘All right, fuck it. Let’s do it.’

Twenty minutes later, the haircut was done. His face and most of his head were clean-shaven – no beard, no stubble, temples bare. Only a strip of hair on top was left, and very short at that.

‘All right. That’s done. Now let’s get some fucking beer.’ Max grinned at Adam. ‘You look like you could use one yourself.’

Adam hung his head and looked at Max from under his brows. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘What? You think Dash is just gonna walk in here?’ Max said. ‘We go out, keep our eyes open, you know. You sit on your ass, nothing happens. And who’s gonna recognize you now, anyway? You look like you just got out of the can or something.’

With arms crossed, Adam said, ‘Fuck, maybe you’re right.’ He looked at his new friends with a faint smirk lurking beneath his nose. ‘What do I have to lose, right?’

Max nodded once. ‘Exactly. Let’s go.’

Adam pulled on the brown boots he was given by Raphael and followed the dealers out of their apartment.

They were seated at their usual table. A cloud of smoke floated under the ceiling. The place was packed all the way to the small stage in the far right corner, where a jazz quartet played Baker and Coltrane covers. Beside the stage, pot-bellied regulars sat at the counter. The room was dim, the stage lit just enough for the musicians to find their strings and keys.

As the three friends talked, turning over what might happen once they crossed paths with Dash, an older man holding a heavy beer in his meaty hand sat down beside them.

‘Excuse me, gentlemen. You mind if I sit here with ya?’

‘Not at all,’ said Raphael. As soon as the guy looked away, he rolled his eyes.

‘Much obliged! Can’t find a decent fuckin’ seat this time of night. Anyway! Good evening. My name’s Todd, and that’s all you need to know.’

Todd wore a light gray shirt, unbuttoned just below his thick neck. Red suspenders held up dark pants pulled high across his gut. He had a long white beard, and his greasy hair was combed neatly to the side.

Unable to think of anything better to discourage the man from yapping at them, Max figured he’d bring up the one topic everyone hated most – politics. ‘Hey, Todd! What do you think about Miller getting elected?’

Todd frowned and waved it off. ‘Forget about it!’

‘Personally, I’d rather a left-winger win.’ Raphael added.

‘Right wing, left wing – chicken wing! Same shit, different toilet,’ Todd retorted, his voice straining against the band and the crowd.

‘How so?’ Raphael asked.

‘What do they teach you in school nowadays, huh? That the far right is fascism and the far left is communism, right?’ He shook his head. ‘Here’s the thing.’ Todd leaned in, his voice a bit graver, ‘They’re just labels. Beneath the ideological layer, both of them aim to achieve the same thing: collectivism! For them, the group is more important than the individual. Both communists and fascists think we should be obedient to the state in the name of a greater good. They say you don’t have rights unless they’re granted by the state. And lemme tell ya, politicians don’t have to be extremists to subscribe to that view!’

Raphael hated talking politics, but – to his own surprise – found himself caught by the man’s odd perspective. ‘Well, okay,’ he said. ‘But if they believe the same things, then why the hell do they fight each other?’

‘It’s about domination!’ Todd said, pounding the table, one syllable per blow. ‘They only fight over who gets to rule the citizens. Those citizens, in turn, would exist for a sole purpose only: to serve the state. If you’ve ever read Macbeth, you should know that the thirst for power takes no prisoners.’ Todd took another gulp of his beer. ‘The multiparty system just gives the peasants the illusion that it’s all fair play. But at the end of the day, it’s all about power. Domination. And everyone’s at it.’ Todd studied his watch before looking back at the three friends. ‘All right, gentlemen. Nice talk, but I gotta move.’

Raphael held his arms open. ‘What, that’s it? You didn’t even finish your beer!’

‘Yeah, I was only stopping by. Wasn’t really planning on staying,’ Todd said as he pulled up his pants. ‘Couldn’t sleep. Thought a beer might help.’

When Todd left, Raphael said, ‘That was not his only fucking beer tonight. I’d bet cash on it!’

‘Whatever. Finally got rid of that massive motherfucker,’ Max said. ‘I’m glad he’s gone.’

‘His theories are fucking out there, but the guy’s not dumb,’ Raphael retorted.

‘We should bounce too,’ Adam said. ‘This ain’t the night to get hammered.’

Raphael looked at Adam as though insulted. ‘So I’m going home with my thirst unquenched. Sure. Love that. Yeah, let’s fucking go,’ he ordered and got up.

Some forty minutes later, the apartment had gone quiet. All were in their beds, except Adam, who tried to make the best of the couch.

Before he succumbed to sleep, he heard a word circling inside his head, a word mentioned earlier by Todd. Over and over again, as if it were the only thing the bearded man had uttered during their brief political palaver. It was short yet somehow encompassed everything Adam had gone through since Peter’s death, and defined the source of his resulting misery.

Domination.

END OF CHAPTER 10

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Chapter 9

A Secret Place

Adam hauled himself slowly but surely back to consciousness. Never had he felt so weakened, drained of energy. He thought his head was about to explode, just as the heads of the men he had killed for Dash had.

He tried his best to remember what had happened, to summon any detail that might explain his current predicament. But the only memory he could retrieve was the moment of being attacked while searching for Rector’s drugs. He attempted to rise and escape from wherever he was, but even in that half-crouch he slammed his head into something that could only be the ceiling.

‘Where am I?’ Adam whispered. He looked this way and that but could see nothing at all. Everything around him was as dark as on the eve of creation.

Unless it wasn’t the place that was dark. Maybe he had lost his eyesight when he’d been hit, he wondered. He had heard that could happen after a blow to the back of the head.

Styles had no notion of his current whereabouts. He couldn’t tell whether he was still in Rector’s crummy shack or in some other place entirely. The only thing he could sense was the damp, earthy smell creeping into his nostrils. He tried to make sense of the space, to feel out the dimensions. Still hunched, he moved toward the wall on his right. Keeping his fingertips on its cold surface, he extended both arms to either side. His left hand met nothing.

‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘At least it’s pretty wide in here.’

After a short while, still moving in that same position to his left, he estimated the room to be about ten feet wide.

Next, he repeated the primitive measurement with the other walls. He set his right fingertips on the wall that had been behind him when he woke up, and with his left hand reached out in search of another surface.

Again, nothing.

Moving to his left again, he finally brushed against something, but it wasn’t a wall. It was a thing – a structure, as it were – solid, strange. He explored it with his hands, feeling along every side. After a moment, the answer took shape. He was touching the steps of a staircase.

They were made of wood, but the steps felt slightly damp.

If there are stairs, then there has to be an exit somewhere above them! A way out of this place! Thoughts about a possible escape danced inside his head.

He felt around for a handle or a knob that might belong to a door in the ceiling, but found nothing of the kind. All his fingers met was a flat wooden surface, rough with splinters.

It must open from the other side, Adam figured. That means I would have to…

He tried to force the door with his arm and shoulder, but whoever had put him here had made sure it wouldn’t budge. After several failed attempts, he paused, needing a moment to breathe.

It must have been important for his captors to get rid of him. But for whom exactly, Adam once more wondered. He handled every job Dash threw at him with razor-sharp precision. Flawless work, no bullshit. He was a big earner and a reliable soldier. As for Bobby... Adam had saved his life, and even a cold-blooded animal like him carried that little glint of respect and gratitude in his eyes for what Adam had done for him.

But what if it had been him? Bobby, who never stopped yapping, who always had to fill every silence with his own voice. Yet when he’d driven Adam to the forest, he could hardly speak at all, as if part of him had already known what was waiting for his young accomplice that day.

Hell, it might just as well have been someone else, he thought. One of Dash’s other soldiers, bitter over Styles’s quick rise and the way he’d started slithering into the boss’s good graces.

Adam’s mind was jammed with questions, wild guesses, a whole swarm of conspiracy theories about who might be responsible for his imprisonment. They gnawed at him and refused to give him a moment’s rest. He had to find out who had done it, but where was he supposed to start?

For now, though, there was a far more urgent matter before him: he had to find a way to free himself from this strange, lightless cell. He was shut in a place so mysterious, so utterly confounding, that he could not guess where he was, or how long he had already been trapped.

It was a place from which he had no idea when or how he might ever get free.

If he ever did at all.

And so, with nothing to do and nowhere for his thoughts to go, Adam lay down in the narrow room that now served as his personal cell and drifted into sleep. A little rest, he hoped, would restore enough strength for another chance at forcing the door when he tried again.

Adam had no idea how long he’d slept. They had taken his watch and his phone before throwing him into this merciless pit of darkness and decay. But of what use would they be? Their batteries would, in all likelihood, be dead by now anyway.

Adam realized he had accidentally nudged some unfamiliar object lying beside him on the floor with his forearm. As he had done with the stairs earlier, he felt it carefully, trying to determine what it might be.

He guessed it was a bowl filled with a warm liquid that smelled faintly of soup. Something fluid, perhaps even edible.

But who had brought it down here? And when?

Apparently, they still need me, and they don’t want me to starve to death, Adam thought, comforting himself with the stubborn belief that he would go on living.

Hunger.

Yes… The importunate stomach pangs were, without question, the thing that tormented him the most during his time in the cramped cell.

Styles resolved to eat what he’d found. With no spoon of any kind nearby, he drank the soup straight from the bowl. It certainly wasn’t the meal of Adam’s dreams, nor anything his mother would have made, but he would rather eat what he had than go hungry for the next, what, days? Months?

The single bowl was nowhere near enough to satisfy him. Hunger still clung to him, nipping and nagging. He had only eased it slightly, but even that small relief made him content under the circumstances.

After finishing the liquid meal, Adam once again found his thoughts circling around the same question: who could have thrown him into this cramped cell, and why? He entertained the possibility that it wasn’t any of Dash’s people at all. On the contrary, perhaps it was Rector’s goons who wanted to avenge their leader’s death. Were they going to kill him? Or would they torture him first, squeeze him for information about Dash’s future plans before putting another hole through his head?

Those, however, were but vain speculations, rising and dying as swiftly as a meager flame.

How could he possibly have known why he’d been brought here, or what fate might be waiting for him?

Adam’s thoughts shattered under a sudden stomachache that worsened by the second. He didn’t scream – he howled like a sick dog. Curled on the damp floor, he clutched his lower belly, thinking his bowels had turned into a nest of furious hornets.

‘Oh no! Not this! Not now!’ Adam groaned, the words barely able to leave his throat.

It didn’t take him long to realize there was only one solution to stop the pain, as quick as it was humiliating. But how was he supposed to do that here? He hammered on the small wooden door in the ceiling, begging to be let out, but there was no answer.

If anyone was on the other side, they had no intention of opening it.

In the corner opposite the stairs, Adam felt a shallow indentation in the ground that could serve as a makeshift latrine if things grew bad enough. But he refused to let himself be degraded that far. So he kept pounding on the door, hoping someone would open it, if only to silence the racket, or that the hinges might finally give way if he kept at it long enough.

Once he’d done what he had to do, Adam felt a humiliation deeper than anything he had known. He wiped at the tears with trembling, clenched fists. The tight wooden walls trapped the stench, letting it accumulate – ferment, even – in the tiny cell’s already stale air. He tried to stir the smell by blowing and fanning with his hands, but to no avail; it only wore him out and made him gulp more of the foul air. The next moment, he vomited.

As if that weren’t enough, the mix of filth pooling on the floor made the stench so overpowering that it knocked the exhausted young prisoner out.

As before, Adam woke without any sense of how long he’d been sleeping in the fetid room.

Despair held him in a tight, crushing grip; he had lost all hope of ever getting out of this place. He had given up on fighting the door, too. He knew there was no way in hell he could force it open, so why bother? Still, some impulse deep inside him, as if in defiance of reason, pushed him toward the door to see if someone might have opened it while he’d been lying there like long-forgotten roadkill.

But no one had.

It was now clear that he could not count on a single careless mistake from his meticulous captors.

Couldn’t they just have killed me instead of leaving me to rot in the middle of who-the-fuck-knows-where?

He crawled back to the wall and sat curled up.

Again, his mind was swarming with thoughts about the choices he had made – choices that had cost him so much and stripped him of everything: his honor, his dignity, and, ultimately, his freedom.

‘Just why the fuck did I say yes to Dash in the first place?’ Adam asked the surrounding darkness. ‘Every idiot knows chasing big money means chasing big fucking trouble! That old-timey godfather’s done nothing but make my life miserable. It’s his fault I’m stuck in this shit-reeking hole! It’s his fault–’

‘…that Peter’s dead?’ an unfamiliar voice finished for him.

Adam looked up and rose into a crouch.

‘Hello? Is there anybody here?’ Adam called. His heartbeat surged up into his throat.

‘But of course. Surely you do not believe that you have been alone here for all this time?’ The voice, despite its high pitch, was unmistakingly that of a man.

‘Who are you?’ Adam asked, his lips quivering.

‘Who I am? Ah, that tired little inquiry. I have heard it to utter exhaustion. Ask me something worthy of my time.’

Adam hesitated but finally asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have come to remind you.’

‘About what? Who are you?’

‘Here we go again…’ A raspy chuckle. ‘I am the one who comes to remind you that the light you so ardently seek, you shall never behold.’

‘What? What light? Why?’

‘Because you killed Peter Berne.’

Adam couldn’t believe the words he’d just heard. ‘That’s insane! I didn’t kill him! It was–’

‘Who?’ The stranger interrupted. ‘You let him die! His blood rests upon your hands!’

‘That’s not true!’ Through a strangled sob he whispered, ‘It’s not true. I’m innocent…’

‘Is that so? And pray tell, just how many lives have you taken thus far?’

‘They…’

‘Well? Speak, damn you!’

‘They deserved to die!’ Adam yelled, forcing his voice as loud as it would go.

‘And you deserve to rot in this hole for the rest of your pitiful existence!’ His final syllable lingered in the fetid air until it was swallowed by the weighty silence.

The voice was gone now. Adam couldn’t help but ask himself why this critter, this thing, had visited him. Was it real, or only a figment of his imagination?

‘Hello?’ Adam drove the word into the unyielding silence, as though trying to pry it open. ‘Hey! Where are you?’

No one answered the call.

Shocked as he was, Adam wondered whether the hostile stranger might hold any answers as to why he had been locked away and how he could get out of this cramped, squalid room.

After a little while, the same cryptic voice began to rise out of nowhere, growing until Adam was forced to cover his ears.

‘ALL OF YOU ARE NOTHING BUT NUMBERS IN MY WING!’

Adam, overcome by the deafening scream, lost consciousness. He collapsed into the indentation, his hair sinking in the putrid puddle of his own filth.

And once more Adam lay on the ground, oblivious to the movements above him, unaware that, in the meantime, unseen figures were opening and closing the door several times

His chances of escaping his cell had been all but foreclosed.

When he came to, Adam struggled to sit in the same cramped posture as before. Slouching like that for who knew how long was its own kind of torment, yet there was no alternative; lying on the uneven, filthy floor became unbearable just as quickly. His bones and joints burned with soreness, and he was sure that one or two discs had already slipped from his overtaxed spine.

He nearly kicked the object set by the stairs again. The moment he touched it, he knew it was the same bowl, filled with the same sickening broth that had ravaged his stomach earlier. He snatched it up and hurled it against the wall, only for half of its contents to splash back across his own body.

On all fours, he screamed, ‘What the fuck!’ at the top of his lungs, tears running over his lips already wet with spit. ‘I didn’t do anything! I don’t deserve to rot down here! You sick fucks! You fucking bastards!’

Styles broke off his outburst at the hint of a sound. He sat down and remained motionless, forcing his ears to hunt for the curious noise, but nothing came. At last he gave up and lowered his forehead onto his crossed forearms.

But there was something else he noticed – the smell.

Or rather, the strange absence of it. The unbearable stench had vanished – but how was that even possible, he asked himself. No mere opening and closing of the door a few times could have cleared it away.

Adam figured there had to be some other opening in one of the walls that allowed the foul reek to escape. He ran his hands over each and every inch of them, searching for even the smallest crack.

Suddenly, a rustle reached his ears. As he moved to the right, the sound grew clearer. He stopped where it came through the clearest. From there, he groped along the wall, searching for an opening that might allow him to see what was going on outside.

And there it was.

He squinted. Through a thin sliver in the planks he could make out rows of trees, blurred by the weak early light. Morning, then. And, to his relief, he wasn’t blind. The view outside convinced him that he was still in the same shack he’d broken into before. The rustle was caused by the footsteps of an old man in an orange raincoat walking past Rector’s place, a wicker basket swinging from his hand. Probably out foraging for mushrooms or some berries. At first glance, the man looked like Adam’s grampa, or even like that Kenner guy they’d taken out not that long ago. But that had to be his exhausted mind, or his bleary eyes, playing tricks on him.

For the first time in a long damn while, there was hope in sight. That old man was his way out, his one-way ticket to freedom. Once he got out of the hole, Adam would burn every last bridge leading back to Dash and Bobby and start over, whatever the price.

‘Hey! Mister! Over here! Help me!’ Adam screamed as loud as he could. ‘Hey! Here! The shack! Help me!’

The old man stopped and looked around.

‘I’m in here! Why the fuck can’t you hear me… Over here!’ Adam yelled, slamming his hands against the surprisingly solid walls of the obscure chamber.

The man stared straight ahead, his gaze fixed on something a few yards out. He lifted his hands, letting the basket drop into the leaves, then turned around, ever so slowly, and broke away from the shack, running deeper into the forest.

‘The hell?’ Adam muttered. Then he shouted, ‘Where are you going? I’m here! Here! Hey! Come back!’

Adam screamed and yelled until his throat burned out, but the old man didn’t hear him. Not anymore.

‘Wait a minute,’ he whispered. ‘That guy wasn’t just running. He must’ve seen someone in the shack…’ He snapped his head toward the small door and murmured, ‘There’s gotta be someone upstairs.’

Adam moved to the door and hammered at it with all his strength.

‘Let me the fuck out! I know you assholes are up there! Open the damn door!’

Adam was sure he heard footsteps overhead, but the door stayed shut.

Only that old dude could’ve helped me out, and he bailed on me. Coward. Now I’m stuck in this shithole for good, he thought. Still, he tried to steady himself with the idea that maybe all he needed was a little patience.

Adam had stopped counting the days. As he lay in this lightless pit, he wondered if he’d ever get out of this place at all. What would, say, five more years down here do to him? Leave him half-blind with a hunched back? The last thing he wanted was to look like that decrepit witch back in Keysville. And what if one day they just forgot about him? No family, no friends, or even that lousy soup to keep him going. He knew he’d die someday, but never would he have imagined starving to death in a hole he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

There were sounds drifting in from the outside, much like the ones he’d heard when the old man walked through the forest. He knew someone was close to the shack, but he wasn’t going to call for help. What good would it do? Anyone with half a brain would get scared off by whatever guards were posted, most probably armed to the teeth, intent on making sure he kept having the worst time of his life. But the noises were different now – they didn’t belong to someone simply wandering through the woods.

The noise grew louder.

The footsteps were heavy, no mistaking that.

Apart from the thud of boots beating the old floorboards, Adam heard something heavy being moved.

The door above him began to tremble.

Someone’s opening it. I can’t believe it! Finally! Yes! I’ll start over! No questions asked!

When the door opened, Adam lifted his gaze toward his supposed savior, but his eyes – long accustomed to the darkness – couldn’t bear the sudden light from above, which stabbed and burned them at the first gleam, before he could ever make out a face.

He made it to the stairs with his eyes closed, ready to finally straighten his back and climb out of that filthy pit. But before he could rise, a heavy fist shot out of the light and crashed into his temple.

Adam’s unconscious body, like a limp rag, dropped back into the same dark room. But fortunately – and unbeknownst to the lonely captive – his stay in that makeshift cell was at long last up.

END OF CHAPTER 9

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Chapter 8

Downfall

During their audience in the warehouse, Adam received his cut and learned the details of the new assignment. He was to infiltrate Rector’s shack in the forest to eliminate the rest of his men and secure the drugs stored there so they could be sold later. Dash believed that the shack had become their new lair and that their appearance at the old mansion had been nothing but a provocation engineered by the dead renegade.

The next day, near noon, Adam was picked up by his usual driver. Contrary to what he had grown accustomed to, Bobby wasn’t very talkative that day. Adam asked only a few harmless questions and each was met with a rather brusque reply. At times, he didn’t even bother with words but responded with mere scowls, grunts, or sighs.

Bobby finally pulled over and brought the car to rest in the same spot he had parked during Adam’s first trip into the forest.

‘Can I get a piece?’ Adam asked and stretched his hand out as ostentatiously as he could. He would never dream of confronting people who belonged to the criminal underworld without a weapon.

Bobby drew a handgun from beneath his jacket. ‘Here. Take this,’ the bearded gangster said with a face devoid of any emotions. “Hypnotized” was the first word that came to Adam’s mind as he regarded his accomplice’s physiognomy.

Styles slipped the gun between his pants and the small of his back and pushed the door open. Noticing that his meaty companion had made no move to follow, he stopped and asked why he wasn’t coming.

Bobby scratched his nose and ran his dirty fingernails through his beard. ‘Boss said it’s a one-man job. Told me just to drop you off and sit tight. That’s it.’

Adam didn’t say anything. He offered only a faint, almost imperceptible nod, got out of the car, and closed the door.

The sky was blanketed with thick, dark clouds, and from where he stood the forest appeared far more somber, far more obscure, than it had the last time he’d been here. He took a deep breath and crossed the ominous edge of the woods. This time, the trek to the shack didn’t seem as time-consuming as before, for now he knew exactly where to go.

He arrived after about fifteen minutes of trudging and treading through a seemingly never-ending coat of fallen leaves.

About ten yards away from the shack, he decided to hide behind one of the trees. He remained there for several minutes to reconnoiter his surroundings and to make sure that the path to the decrepit shelter was clear and safe. Fear was consuming him from within as he crept toward his destination, stooping surreptitiously among the trees.

How bad can it be? How many of them can be inside? What if they take me out? I can’t die here. Dash doesn’t give a shit if I walk out of this. But I do. His head felt like a nest in which his thoughts swarmed like a myriad of frantic wasps.

But there stood no cars this time, as they had when he last surveyed the area.

Adam had made it to the shack intact. He pressed his back to the wooden wall between the door and the broken window and held the gun firmly in both of his hands beside his head.

He knew one thing for sure – one wrong move and he’d be toast.

His heart was hammering in his chest, yet he forced himself to breathe as quietly as his frayed nerves would permit.

He didn’t hear anyone inside. There was but an undecipherable silence.

Are they gone? Or what if everyone’s asleep? he wondered.

But none of that mattered. It was now or never.

He reached for the door handle, but at the last millisecond he pulled back, realizing that opening the door the usual way might take too long, and could betray his covert presence. It would be better to break down the door with a solid kick.

But what if it doesn’t work the first time? Those asswipes would hear the thump. They’d know and they sure as shit wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in me! Adam contemplated again.

But he chose to take the risk and go with the first option after all.

He stood before the door and, taking a deep breath, lifted his foot.

In the same instant Adam’s boot slammed into the door, it flew inward and crashed onto the rotten floorboards. He waved his gun around and fired a couple of aimless, preventive shots.

He would’ve expected anything but what he was seeing now.

The moment he stepped inside, he saw no one, not one living soul. The hollow, uneasy silence he had noticed earlier suddenly made perfect, chilling sense.

Adam figured that if nobody was there, he might as well look for those drugs Dash wanted. He went through everything, rummaged through every drawer and locker, groped around under the bed, ripped the filthy mattress open, searched the bags that lay in the corner, yet he couldn’t find a single thing that looked even remotely like drugs.

Adam took another look around the room and caught sight of something lying on the small table next to the entrance. It was a photograph of a young couple.

‘What? B-but this… this can’t be…’ Adam whispered. He stared at the photo as the details slowly sank in.

He approached the table with slow, careful steps, and as the photograph came more clearly into focus, his nagging suspicions were hardening into absolute certainty. The faces in it began to resemble, more and more unmistakably, the very people he knew all too well.

It was as clear to him as the dazzling morning dew catching the first rays of daylight.

He knew them. He knew those faces as surely as he knew his own.

Carolyn and Peter.

He couldn’t make sense of it. What was the picture doing there, and why were they together in it, clinging, pressed so close together like that? In this filthy shack of all places! The unexpectedness and the sheer absurdity of the image defied him, too; it grinned back at him and spat in his face. He stood helpless before it, as though he had been robbed of any ability to act.

‘Merry Christmas, motherfucker!’ barked a raspy voice behind him.

‘What the h-’ Adam’s words died in his throat.

Before he could turn around, a hard blow to the back of his head sent him sprawling across the floorboards.

Adam lost consciousness at once. And as he went down, the photograph slid out of his fingers, and the two most important people in his life drifted downward after him in a slow, featherlike path onto the decaying, wooden floor.

END OF CHAPTER 8

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Chapter 7

Renaissance

Dash hadn’t called Adam in a while, which left the young gangster and his new girl with much more time on their hands. They began seeing each other more regularly after the incident at the Half Moon Diner, too. Whenever Carolyn had extra work to do, they limited themselves to meeting about once a week. If she had a few days off, they would meet every other day, still giving each other that noble “room to breathe,” as they put it. They shared the same basic concern, that – just as someone might get sick from overindulging in their favorite food – they would grow tired of each other if they spent too much time together.

Each time they decided to leave their city for a while, Adam’s gold-haired love never told him where they were going. He would learn it on the way, or after they arrived, and even then, the evanescent names never stuck. In a way, he never knew where he really was. Half the time, he felt as though he floated from place to place, drifting through them in a half-dream, as it were. And as if his unretentive perception of things weren’t enough, one time he asked Carolyn directly about the name of their destination, but just as she answered, he was seized by a violent cough that left him temporarily deaf to anything around him, and he spent the remainder of the journey in his usual blissful ignorance.

There was one occasion when a police car appeared behind them and signaled for them to pull over. A tall officer informed Carolyn she’d been speeding and asked for her paperwork. Adam began to sweat when he caught sight of the officer’s uniform through the window on Carolyn’s side. He had the blood of two men on his hands, a not-so-small sum of money he hadn’t declared, and – as if that weren’t enough – he was sitting next to someone who made her living selling drugs.

Who knows what’s inside the glove compartment, or the trunk? Adam thought. That woman’s going to get us both thrown in jail!

But the whole situation turned out very different from what he had expected. Instead of writing Carolyn a ticket, the officer handed back all her documents the moment he read her name. He stammered an apology he never finished as he hurried back to the squad car, where he immediately got into a heated argument with his partner.

Adam had no idea what was going on. He chose to confront the matter with Carolyn outright.

‘You wanna tell me what the hell just happened? I mean, the cop stops you, reads your name, and just runs off? You didn’t even get a warning!’

‘You see what a name and the right connections can do? More than you think, sugar. You’ll see for yourself. Sooner or later.’

‘I guess I will.’ Adam rolled his eyes and sat back. He wanted to act like it was nothing, but deep down, he couldn’t wait for the cops to tremble in his presence too.

But even with all the envy he felt over how she got away with everything, Adam found in Carolyn a companion who filled him with a deep, almost embarrassing satisfaction. Never before had he experienced that kind of acceptance and attentive warmth from anyone before her. Yet he could never quite answer himself whether they were actually in a relationship. He never liked putting labels on things, either; he preferred to let them grow on their own, organically. What mattered most to him was that he loved her, and he was sure she felt the same. Nothing made him think she might be interested in anyone else – and all that was enough to make him happy.

Adam’s new life felt perfect to him; he had affection, freedom, and no real worries.

Almost.

Because as spring approached, he started running short on money.

It’s about time I made some dough again, he kept saying to himself before he finally decided to call his boss.

In accordance with the established rules, he called Dash, let the phone give its three dutiful rings, and hung up. With the skin around his fingernails worked nearly raw, he waited for the call to be returned.

The phone did ring after a few seconds, but – for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp – Adam hesitated. He felt a vague danger in picking it up, a creeping foreboding that the device was capable of some erratic, unpredictable malice. Still, he reached for the receiver and didn’t postpone what had to be done.

‘Ah, Adam! It has been some time, has it not?’ Dash observed. Adam recognized his voice at once; it had that smooth, measured authority of a man long accustomed to being obeyed.

‘Good evening, Mr. Dash. Yeah-’

‘Well then, what is it I can do for you, Adam?’

‘I… I’m not sure how to put this…’

Ease up, man, Styles thought. He was this close to slapping his own cheek.

Dash urged him on, ‘Go on, my boy. Speak!’

‘I wanted to ask whether you… whether you needed any help. You know, like last time, I mean.’

A pause.

‘Yes! I am gratified you have not forgotten me, or my modest enterprise. But have no fear, Adam; I have known all along that you were in capable hands.’

‘Uhm…’ Adam wasn’t really sure what his boss meant, so he chose to let him continue.

‘Yes, yes. You may indeed prove useful to us, Adam. But before we proceed, there is one small matter I must ask you to attend to. Bobby will come for you tomorrow evening, around eight. He will acquaint you with everything you need to know.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Dash. I’m very grateful for your help.’

‘Goodbye,’ Dash said with effortless indifference, and the line went dead.

Bobby pulled up at eight o’clock sharp. He stopped the car beside the brick fortress of a building where Adam stood waiting.

‘Howdy,’ Bobby said, their hands meeting in a hard clasp while he lit a cigarette.

‘Howdy to you. So, what are we up to today?’ Adam said and settled into the passenger seat.

‘The fuck you mean “what are we up to”? Don’t you know?’

Adam jerked his head back. ‘Well, Dash said you’d fill me in.’

The bearded gangster sighed and shook his head. ‘Listen, it’s like this: we gotta pay a few guys a visit-’

‘How many?’

‘Three, I think.’ Bobby reached for a crumpled piece of paper, glanced at it, and tossed it away. ‘Right. We gotta see three guys who still owe the boss his envelope. We get the dough and then we get rid of ‘em.’

‘Okay, and what do we do if they’re, you know, empty-handed?’

A quick shrug. ‘Then we’ll just get rid of them.’ Bobby frowned and gave Adam a thin smile. ‘Clear?’

‘Clear as day.’

‘You done this before. And you handled tougher. This ain’t rocket science for you anymore.’

‘Right. Let’s go.’

‘I’ll go when I feel like it.’ Bobby handed Adam a gun and they disappeared into traffic.

Adam didn’t care to ask what city they were heading to. A light drizzle blurred the street lights and the traffic signals, their colors smeared across the wet asphalt as they drove.

‘That’s where the dude lives,’ Bobby informed Adam while jerking his thumb toward a building with an almost sterile facade.

Once the two colleagues climbed the stairs to the second floor, before them stood a tall, red-painted door with a golden number 5 fixed to it. Bobby eased it open and slipped into the apartment as quietly as he possibly could. A few seconds later, they were already moving down the narrow vestibule and into the living room where the delinquent sat. He was a skinny young man with dark, curly hair. All he wore that night was a white T-shirt and a pair of white boxers. He seemed absorbed by carelessness, smoking a joint and drinking his beer straight from the bottle. Upon seeing Bobby and Adam standing with their guns in their hands, present in his very own apartment, he snapped upright, set aside the bottle, and tried to put out the blunt, not entirely certain whether he’d hit the ashtray or the fabric of the couch instead.

The man couldn’t force a single word out. It felt as if someone had cinched a rope around his throat, while the rest of his body shook like the tail of a startled rattlesnake. He knew exactly why they’d come and that the outcome of their visit wasn’t going to be pretty.

‘Hey, Philly boy. The fuck you doin’ sittin’ there like that?’ Bobby said.

‘W-well, hi. I, uh, I wasn’t doing nothing. J-just…’

‘This here’s a good friend of mine – Adam. You know him, Philly?’ Bobby asked, tapping Adam on the shoulder.

Philip shook his head.

‘Well, maybe you oughta know him ‘cause he’s the one who took out Rector.’

Philip kept his wide eyes locked on Bobby. He tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone completely dry. ‘Rector?’

‘That’s right,’ Bobby said, his hand still resting on Adam’s shoulder. ‘We were bored, just cruisin’ around n’ shit, and since we were in the neighborhood, I go, “Ain’t this where Philly stays?” We figured we’d swing by, see what you’re up to. Hope we ain’t interruptin’ nothin’ important. ‘Cause if we are-’

‘No, no! Not at all! Everything’s cool and kosher, Bobs.’

A wide grin spread across Bobby’s face. ‘I’m delighted to hear that,’ he whispered. He then dropped himself in the armchair beside the couch and took a good look around the room. ‘You got yourself a real nice crib, Phil. Real fuckin’ nice. What’s the rent on a place like this?’

‘Listen, Bobby… I can explain. Everything-’

‘I asked you a question, Philly boy. And I sure as fuck hope you can answer it.’

Philip clapped his rigid hands together. After a brief pause, he stared down at his socks and said, ‘It’s, uh, it’s about eight grand. A month.’

‘Well, fuck me sideways n’ call me Shirley! You ain’t exactly hurtin’ for cash, are ya? ‘Cause here’s the thing, Philly – there’s a guy you owe a whole lotta money to. And, just so you know, he ain’t runnin’ a fuckin’ charity.’

‘Bobby, I-’

‘Lemme stop you right there. You got it?’

‘Well, not right now exactly, but…’

Bobby stretched out his arm, pressed the gun to Philip’s temple, and pulled the trigger. The debtor collapsed to his right, his head sinking into the pool of blood spreading across the couch.

After Philip died, Dash’s soldiers searched the apartment for any money they could take back to their boss. The few thousand dollars they found went into the black gym bag Adam was carrying. It seemed like the right choice, he figured, since so many people used it that it barely drew any attention.

‘We’re done here. Let’s move. We got other places to hit,’ Bobby ordered, and they left the chic apartment.

They got into the next building thanks to a little boy who couldn’t have been more than six. He was nice – or naive – enough to hold the door for them from the inside. The building rose fourteen stories, and the man they had to see lived on the sixth. Bobby groaned once he’d learned there was no elevator, which meant a long, sweaty climb for his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame.

‘It’s a damn shame we gotta put him down,’ Bobby said, still panting.

To Adam, it looked like his accomplice was genuinely bothered about the next hit.

He raised his brows at Bobby.‘And since when are you so fucking compassionate?’ he said. ‘You know the guy?’

‘Matter of fact, yeah, I do. We go way back – high school. Played ball together. He rang me, sayin’ he really needed some paper bad, so I got him to borrow a couple grand from Dash. Now he can’t pay it back. He prolly knows we’re on our way, too.’

‘I’m sorry, man, but you know how it is – work is work.’

‘Yeah.’ Bobby stopped to take a breath. ‘It really sucks camel dick things turned out this way. But what can you do. Anyway, this is the place.’ He shook his head and let out one last sigh before carrying out his order. ‘Come on. Let’s get this shit over with…’

Adam and Bobby stepped into the apartment without knocking. Zack was standing in the middle of his bachelor’s apartment, as if simply existing there required effort. He was a tall man with short, blond hair, wearing worn jeans and a green checkered shirt whose sleeves were rolled up in a careless, absentminded way.

‘I gotta admit, I expected you guys a lot earlier.’ Zack smiled, ever so faintly, as he stared down at the tiled floor.

‘Don’t you think for a second this is easy for me, Zack,’ Bobby said.

‘Neither is it for me,’ Zack retorted. He turned toward the window. There was little to see, only the opposite walls with their small, identical windows. All the buildings were so alike that replacing their facade with a mirror wouldn’t have changed the view by much. ‘You think I could have a smoke before-’

‘Sure,’ Bobby cut his friend off. The moment was awkward enough; he didn’t want to stretch it out with small talk.

Zack gave a slight nod and stepped out onto the balcony, leaving the door open behind him. He let his eyes settle on the cloud-laden night with each drag he took.

‘I don’t have the money, you know, so you can go right ahead and shoot me,’ Zack said matter-of-factly, like a man who had already counted himself among the dead.

Bobby was lifting his arm when Adam stepped up beside him and whispered something into his ear. The bearded gangster’s eyes narrowed as he listened and nodded. Without saying anything, he got out of the apartment and pulled the door shut behind him.

Adam walked to the balcony entrance and shot Zack a few times in the back without a word of warning. The impact hurled him over the low railing, sending his body plunging six stories down before it struck the concrete below.

Adam rushed toward the railing and looked down. ‘Oh shit…,’ he whispered, then shouted at the top of his lungs: ‘Bobby! Get over here real quick!’

Bobby shoved the door open and came striding in. ‘What’s going on? Where the hell’s Zack?’

Both of them made their way onto the balcony and leaned over. Zack’s corpse lay twisted on the sidewalk in an utterly misshapen posture. Scanning the area below, they noticed two police officers whose eyes moved between Zack’s body and the two gangsters standing on the narrow platform jutting from the building.

‘Shit! They saw us! What do we do now?’ Adam blurted. His whole body had gone cold.

‘Relax, will ya? Just relax!’ His bearded colleague said.

‘But what are we gonna do? The cops saw us, man!’

‘Can you shut the fuck up a second and let me think?’

Adam went back inside the dead man’s apartment and paced the room in quick strides.

‘Okay, listen up,’ Bobby said. ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do. If we walk out the front, they’ll be waitin’ for us. Maybe they’re already comin’ up. And we are not gettin’ into a shootout with the cops, shit gets too messy. We run. If one of ‘em grabs you, just punch him or whatever and keep runnin’. You got this, all right?’

Adam nodded briskly. ‘I’ll try.’

The gangster duo bolted out of Zack’s apartment as fast as they could. They rushed down the stairs, alert for whatever unforeseen trouble might rise up to meet them.

Bobby was lowering his foot toward the next step, nearing the second floor, when he came face-to-face with one of the police officers dressed in his usual black uniform. He froze and stepped back. Adam, unaware of his colleague’s unexpected move, crashed into him and tumbled onto his back on the dusty stairs. Before the police officer was able to utter a single word, Bobby clenched his massive fist and drove it with all he had right into the man’s cheekbone. His unconscious body rolled down the steps and stopped on a lower landing. He looked as if he were merely taking a nap, however unusual a place it was for one.

‘One more to go,’ the bearded pugilist said and continued his escape with his younger accomplice.

The moment they stepped outside, they found the second policeman waiting for them, his gun aimed at the pair of fugitives. Bobby didn’t hesitate – he kept on running as if no one were there. Adam, however, stopped cold and stared at the young uniformed officer; the sight of the gun paralyzed every one of his already tense muscles.

Man, if only the cops feared me the way they fear Carolyn, Adam thought.

When Bobby noticed Adam standing there, he rushed back and yanked him by the sleeve of his jacket. The rough pull snapped him out of his daze at once. Now he ran too, following his burly partner toward the car.

Bobby’s years behind the wheel were finally paying off. He drove through the city’s streets with practiced ease as he tried to lose the police. But no matter how smoothly he handled his ride, the squad car clung stubbornly to their tail.

‘Fuck! What are we gonna do?’ Adam boomed as he watched the car behind them. ‘Dash is gonna fuck us up for this, big time!’

‘Fuckin’ cool it for a sec, will ya?’

‘Well, excuse me for giving a shit, but the cops are literally trying to kill us and you’re telling me to cool it?’

Suddenly, the bearded driver cut left into a narrow alleyway. The police kept going straight and turned their sirens off after a short while.

Adam stared at Bobby, then at the rear window as he tried to fathom the squad car’s sudden disappearance. ‘What the hell just happened? They were right on us, and now they’re just… gone?’

‘Listen, man,’ Bobby said, lighting a cigarette. ‘They knew exactly who the fuck they were followin’. They knew they couldn’t do shit – too much heat, no payoff.’ He slouched back in his seat and squinted at his colleague. The doubt lingering in Adam’s eyes told him he’d have to explain it in simple terms. ‘Look, they’re cops, all right? Most of ‘em got families, mortgages, shit like that. They ain’t throwin’ their asses on the line just to lock up a couple nobodies like us.’ He took a long drag and exhaled through a smirk. ‘Most importantly, though, we pay ‘em way too good for them to give a shit.’

‘Okay. Fine. So why’d you punch that cop on the stairs? And why was the other one chasing us the whole time?’

‘The first cop was prolly some new kid, didn’t know the rules yet. Besides, you saw him. He had a real punchable mug, if I ever fuckin’ saw one.’ Bobby shrugged. ‘What can I say? Temptation got the best of me.’ He cackled and dragged on his cigarette. ‘And the second cop, well… You gotta keep up appearances, if you know what I mean.’

Adam sank back in his chair and sighed. ‘I guess I still got a lot to learn.’

‘You can say that again,’ Bobby said and flashed a crooked grin. ‘Don’t sweat it. You’ll catch on. By the way, the fuck happened to your face?’ he asked, pointing at the long, thick scar running down toward Adam’s jaw.

‘Nothing. Just a stupid bar fight.’

‘Well, it looks pretty fuckin’ ugly, I’ll tell you that.’

‘Oh yeah? You should’ve seen the other guy.’

Bobby shook his head, flicking the cigarette butt out the window, and threw it in reverse. ‘Whatever you say. Let’s finish this thing.’

On their way to the third debtor, they were stopped by the same squad car that had chased them moments earlier. The police officer leaned down and asked Bobby for his driver’s license. Bobby, knowing the whole thing was just a mere charade, opened the glove compartment, pulled out a handful of old business cards and fliers, and handed them over. The officer pretended to study them, scribbled something in his notepad, and asked whether they’d seen anything suspicious. After they told him no, Bobby took the leaflets, tossed them blithely over his shoulder, and thanked the policeman for the “safe trip.”

He glanced at Adam with a smug little smile. ‘Just like I told ya.’

Several minutes later, they drove into the neighborhood where Henry Kenner lived.

As they got out of the car, the two men already saw him standing in the doorway – a dark, motionless silhouette.

Henry was a rather short man. His gray hair, combed to the side, and the deep wrinkles carved into his dry face, bore witness to his advanced age.

Bobby and Adam drew closer, their heavy steps slow and deliberate. Kenner backed up but shouted, ‘Get the hell out of here! You won’t get one stinking penny out of me, you animals!’ He intended to draw his neighbors’ attention, but with little success. Not a single light flicked on in the surrounding houses, and no curtains moved.

Henry kept backing into his house. With trembling hands, he grabbed the push broom leaning by the doorway and swung it at them as hard as he could. Adam caught the handle and struck the panicked senior on the head hard enough for him to pass out. Kenner collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

‘We’re offing him now or later?’ Adam asked.

‘Not now. Tie him up. Don’t need this prick giving us trouble when he wakes up. You didn’t crack his skull, right?’

‘Nah, I don’t think so. But why do we gotta wait?’

‘‘Cause he’s gonna be awake for it. He’s gotta know what he’s dyin’ for. And before that? He’s tellin’ us where he hid the fuckin’ money.’

Kenner woke up a couple of minutes later. Groggy, drooly, and tied up, he was neither able to spit at them nor insult them. He tried to reach for something, anything, to defend himself, but with his hands bound he could only move his head. Even his words came out slow and thick, as though his mouth had forgotten how to work. Still, he managed to guide them toward the cupboard under the TV where he kept his savings, and to the key to open it, which rested under one of the pillows on the couch.

Kenner was still lying on the ground. After he’d gotten a little strength back, he forced his voice out as loud as he could. ‘And what now, you want to kill me? You got what you wanted! What more do you want from me?’

‘Actions have consequences, old man. Everybody pays,’ Bobby said and aimed the silencer right at Kenner’s forehead.

‘You bastards! You filthy sons of whores!’ Henry screamed right before the bullet tore through his head. Blood stained the walls, the floor, even the ceiling.

‘All right, let’s call it a day,’ Bobby said while rubbing his bloodshot eyes. ‘Let’s get the hell outta here.’

Adam hefted the gym bag filled with Kenner’s – or now Dash’s – money and laid it in the yawning mouth of the trunk. The two gangsters slid into the car and, once again, rolled off with their blood-stained spoils, carrying them to the man who would grant them the wages they believed they had earned.

END OF CHAPTER 7

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