Birth of a Monster (11 page)

“I’m satisfied with one eponymous
store,” Righty said chuckling, referring to Rich’s Groceries &
Hardware. “I’m thinking this one should just be called Groceries
& Hardware. You can use the same connection for inventory—Mr.
Hoffmeyer—but don’t tell him I’m the owner. If he asks who the
owner is, just say, ‘He prefers to remain anonymous.’”

Righty was beginning to have a deep
distrust of Mr. Hoffmeyer, now that he thought back on his brazen
offers to perform money laundering services.

“In fact,” Righty said, “Find a
different inventory supplier for the new store.”

“Yes, sir,” Robert asked.

“Okay, here’s how pay and
responsibilities are going to work. I am making you head manager of
both stores. You can hire and fire. You can set pay and people’s
hours. You know how to run a store profitably, and that’s what
matters. Your pay is hereby increased to $80,000 annually to be
paid monthly. Get receipts for all hotel costs while you’re staying
in Sivingdel, and find some place nice.

“If you make this new store run like
the old one, you can expect more stores and more pay. Any
questions?”

“Mr. Simmers . . . THANK YOU!” Robert
said.

“You’re worth every falon. Just don’t
let me down,” Righty said.

“You’ll have another profitable store
soon. I promise.”

“Well, I suppose I better reopen for
business,” Righty said. “Thanks again.”

He extended his hand, and Robert shook
it.

Why can’t I find more people
like Robert in my other organization?
Righty asked himself, as he walked briskly out of the store,
cringing at the thought of what kind of tempest he might find at
home.

Robert was having a bit of trouble
standing on two feet. His head felt light, and the room seemed to
be spinning. He shook it off and went back to work.

Chapter 22

Somehow, from the moment Righty stepped
foot inside his home, he knew things weren’t going to be half as
bad as he expected. In fact, although he begrudged excessive
optimism, maybe they would just be so-so. He had faced enough
gale-force tongue lashings in his day to get a sense of what was to
come from the moment he stepped inside the house.

He heard cooing from the living room,
which meant Janie was here. And if things were really bad, she
would have gone off to her parents’ house, the way she used to from
time to time during his drinking days.

“Babe?” Righty said, probing Janie’s
mood.

He was rewarded with silence, which
meant on a scale of one to ten of moods she was probably at a three
or four.

Righty entered.

“Babe, I’m so sorry,” Righty
began.

“Back to drinking?” Janie said, trying
to sound calm, but a tear rolled down her cheek.

“No . . . nooo,” Righty said, moving
towards her and kneeling. In his drinking days, he would have said
“no” while moving in the opposite direction.

Janie didn’t deign to look at him, but
if he wasn’t mistaken her nostrils flared momentarily, perhaps
signifying she was taking a whiff. That would mean at least she
cared. On the other hand, perhaps that was just a sign of
fury.

“I’ve been meaning to
surprise you, honey, but everything ended up taking much longer
than expected.”

“Hmmphhh,” she said, still not looking
at him.

“Janie,” he said calmly, resting a hand
on each knee lightly and looking at her yearningly.

She now gave him a stormy stare, but
this was still actually a sign of hope.

“I’m buying us a new place,
Janie.”

The storm was replaced by a skeptical
look, which was yet one more step up the ladder towards
reconciliation, but it also meant that whatever came out of his
mouth in the next few seconds better be convincing, or he was going
to fall all the way down the steps.

“It was supposed to just be a trip out
to the ranch to sign some papers, but then the guy started playing
games to size me up. Let me start from the beginning. I heard from
a customer at the store a couple months ago that a rancher, just an
hour or two ride from here, was wanting to sell and that the price
he was asking has been going down month after month because he
hasn’t found any takers.

“It sounded too good to be true, so I
went out there to have a look at the place about a month ago, and I
knew right then and there that this would be the perfect place for
us. It’s got a beautiful house with a white picket fence. But
stupid old me—I had ‘I want this house!’ written all over my stupid
face.

“The seller’s a sly old dog, and he
told me I should come out again so that we could sign. Well, I went
out there ready to sign and buy, and he tells me that in the
meantime he’s gotten several other offers. Now, I know this guy’s
lying right through his tobacco-chewing teeth, so I told him,
‘Well, I’m happy for you, but I can’t talk about this anymore
unless we go back to our original price.’

“Now, he sized me up like I ain’t never
seen a man size up another, and I tried my best at a poker face,
and I think I just might have pulled it off because he said, ‘Well,
those other fellas have only talked so far, so maybe you should
come back soon and see.’

“I decided to be a bit of a sneak, and
I hid in the woods near his house. I watched two days and nights,
and not one soul came by. So, I worked up my courage, and today I
approached him and told him what I did, and I said, ‘I’m sorry for
being a sneak, but I’ve got a store to tend to and a new daughter,
so if you’re looking to sell, I’m looking to buy at our original
price. But you decide in forty-eight hours, or forget
it.’

“He told me, ‘Come by in two days. If
those other fellas haven’t shown their faces, I think we can talk
about the original price.’

“Baby, I think it’s going to happen.
Heck! I know it is! I didn’t tell you—because I wanted this all to
be a surprise—but things are going really well at the hardware
store, and I’m on the verge of opening up another one in Sivingdel.
We always talked about getting out of this miserable shack! I’m
talking about a real house!”

Janie had silent tears rolling down her
face, but she looked happy.

“You know I don’t need a new house to
be proud of you,” she said in an earnest tone, while feeling proud
of him for the first time in quite a while.

“You deserve it, babe, and that’s all
there is to it,” Righty said softly.

He was worn out from the lies and the
new chores these lies were going to entail to make them reality,
but he felt relief as well. A family ranch had many benefits—one of
them being that you didn’t have to get the news every
day.

“May I?” Righty asked, glancing at
Heather.

“You’re the daddy,” Janie said, a hint
of a smile.

Righty picked up Heather, and she
looked at him with an innocent smile. As soon as his hands came in
contact with her, he felt a purifying sensation as if she could do
to his guilty soul what water had done recently to his bloody
hands. It seemed as if all the purity of the universe was
concentrated into this one tiny being and that by holding her long
enough and gently enough somehow all the evil inside of him would
ooze out of his pores and evaporate into thin air.

“Hi there,” Righty said joyfully, as he
put his pinky finger on her nose and gave it the lightest little
push, prompting Heather to make a sound that seemed to be
giggling.

He saw Janie smile out of the corner of
his eye.

He sat down on a chair, held Heather in
his arms, and only with great restraint refrained from sobbing, the
consequence of his grim inner resolve melting before this seemingly
powerless infant. He would have liked to stay there all afternoon,
that evening, and every day for the rest of eternity.

But like a weary man hearing
the torturous sound of an alarm clock, the rock climbing coach
looked at him and said,
Sure, rest a few.
You’re gonna need it because you’ve got some of your most difficult
climbing ahead this afternoon and this evening. Otherwise, all the
climbing you did last night and earlier today is going to come back
and bite you reeeeal hard. The only way is up. Either that, or
you’ll never see your daughter again except maybe while you glance
down from the scaffold.

Righty lost the battle with his tears.
They streamed down his face, and he began to sob.

Alarmed, he handed Heather back to
Janie, almost terrified of her effect on him.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he said, still
sobbing. “I’m going to make all of this up to you. But as for right
now, I have to go back to the store. I’ve got mountains of
paperwork. But I think by tomorrow things will be back to
normal.”

Never before had he wished so much that
he had called it quits a few days ago. Tats’ problems would have
been his own then. Righty would be a rich man with a wife and
daughter he loved dearly. He could have burned the Smokeless Green
at his ranch or handed it over to the ranchers to do with as they
pleased. Perhaps he could have sold the ranch to them.

While he would later realize those exit
points were nearly as impossibly fraught with danger as his current
situation, he did at least have the perspicuity to realize he had
begun one nasty spider web yesterday, and it would be his following
steps that would determine whether his pursuers—existing or
latent—ended up suspended helplessly in this web or he
himself.

Chapter 23

“Whether by land or by sea!” bellowed
Mayor Roverdile, pausing for dramatic emphasis while surveying the
large crowd assembled before him at around 2:15 p.m. in the city
square.

“Whether by land or by sea,” he
repeated, this time in a near-reverential whisper. “We will spare
no expense, leave no corner unsearched, and not quit until the
vile, cowardly perpetrators of this misdeed are brought forward to
justice!!”

The crowd clapped
enthusiastically.

“JUSTICE!” a man yelled. “THE GALLOWS!”
opined another. Soon a tumultuous chorus of punishments for the
perpetrators was being recommended loudly by the insatiable
mob.

“We have captured one malefactor and
killed another who tried to escape. Your heroic police are to thank
for this tremendous progress we have made thus far!”

“HANG HIM!!” cried a man.

“All in good time,” promised the mayor.
“But we must first learn who his accomplices are and, most
importantly, who the ringleaders are!”

“FIND THE RINGLEADERS!” shouted another
man.

“Now, if you will excuse me,” said the
mayor, who then promptly left the stage.

The police station was a smoldering
ruin. The entire city might have been set ablaze if not for the
fact the police station had been constructed hundreds of yards from
any neighboring buildings. An infamous jailbreak at the prior
police station, accomplished by tunneling from nearby buildings
around a century ago, had been to thank for that.

The mayor was telling the truth that
they had caught a suspect. He was a skinny runt underling too slow
to escape from the swift pursuit of an officer who saw him fleeing
from the front doors after the chain was tied and too puny to put
up any effective resistance once apprehended. He was now being kept
in a makeshift jail whose location was kept top-secret.

So far, he had refused to talk, but the
mayor planned on putting the screws to him tomorrow. Today, he
planned to focus on crafting his public relations response and
seeing if any other suspects turned up. What was left of the police
force—approximately one half—was told to focus on nothing other
than rounding up suspects related to the terror attack.

Although no one besides those involved
in the attack had been directly informed by Tats of the operation,
and those who had refused to participate had been massacred, Tats
had ordered the word to be passed down the chain of command that
all criminal operations were to cease entirely for three weeks,
during which time every member of the gang was to stay indoors. It
was also made clear that anyone who violated this order would be
dealt with most harshly.

Chapter 24

“Today was historic, and I only hope
tomorrow’s publication will satisfy its moral, civic, and
intellectual obligations,” Mr. Harry Felden said, helping himself
to a large serving of mashed potatoes, while seated at the head of
a small army, also known as his family. His wife, six sons, and
eight daughters sat dutifully around the table, listening with
spellbound attention to the man who commanded their small universe
and did so with no less sway at The Sivingdel Times, the largest,
oldest, and most respected newspaper in the city. No less could be
expected of the man who was not only the executive editor, but
owner, of the august newspaper.