Dead Clown Barbecue (28 page)

If nothing else, this seemed like an appropriate time to speak up. "Look, that couldn't be less necessary. I'd never call the cops on you guys."

"Oh, really? Why is that?"

"Because I've . . . I've got bodies hidden everywhere. I wouldn't want anybody poking around my place."

The men exchanged a look. I was relatively certain they didn't believe me. I didn't make any effort to insist that my story was true, since it would be pretty easy to verify the lack of bodies.

"That," said the bald man, "is the most ridiculous lie I've ever heard from someone facing death. But I'm entertained by it."

"That was my intent," I said. It wasn't, of course, but I was willing to try anything to stay on his good side.

"We probably shouldn't kill you now, anyway," said the bald man, though he continued to point his gun at me in a potentially killing manner. "We'll take you to see the boss. Find out what he wants to do with you."

I nodded politely. "Thank you."

The bald man grinned. "You do realize that we were going to give you a merciful shot to the head, while the boss might have you slowly tortured to death, right?"

"No, I did not realize that."

"Now you do. Sucks to be you."

* * *

I sat in the back seat of their car, planning my daring escape. The plan currently involved us being struck by another car, spinning out of control, and my captors being knocked unconscious or dead against the dashboard, leaving me free to vacate the vehicle. Admittedly, there was a strong element of luck required for this plan to come to fruition, and I was seeking other options.

"What are your names?" I asked.

The bald man, who was not driving, turned around to look at me. "None of your business."

Fine. I'd think of him as Baldy. Served him right. Baldy and Hairy.

The driver glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. "I'm Harry," he said.

I was too scared to chuckle at the coincidence, but I did note it with silent amusement.

"Why'd you tell him that?" asked Baldy.

"What's he going to do with that information? He's probably going to be dead in an hour."

"You're kidding, right? An hour from now he'll still be in the knives-under-toenails stage."

"I mean . . . you know what I mean. He'll be on his way to death in an hour."

"And what if the boss wants to let him go?"

"Then he knows my name is Harry. Big deal. It's not like my name is Snorky McDorkel."

Baldy nodded. "Yeah, I see your point."

He still didn't introduce himself, but I chose to focus instead on the "knives-under-toenails" portion of the conversation. "He won't really torture me, will he?" I asked.

"Sure he will," said Baldy. "Why wouldn't he?"

"I haven't done anything wrong."

"You can try explaining that to him, but you'll still end up tortured to death."

"You'll put in a good word for me, won't you?"

"Unlikely."

Though I'm not what you would call a complainer, I was very tempted to let Baldy and Harry know how upset I was with my current predicament. However, I also wanted to avoid a situation where either or both of them recommended to the boss that I be put to death. So I settled for sitting quietly in the back seat, thinking complaining thoughts about my current predicament.

About fifteen minutes later, they blindfolded me. It was either that or ride in the trunk. I'd ridden in a car trunk once, when some friends tried to get me into a drive-in movie for free, and they decided that it would be funny just to leave me in there during the double feature. When they finally opened the trunk, I pretended to be dead, which would have been hilarious revenge, except that I oversold the illusion (having my tongue lolling out of my mouth was an unnecessary detail) and my friends decided to disprove my fatality by throwing a milkshake on me.

I sat there wearing the blindfold, listening carefully for any details that might reveal my location. I knew the car was in motion, so that might prove helpful. They made a lot of turns. At one point they may have struck a small animal. Finally we arrived at our destination, and they helped me out of the car and led me indoors.

They sat me down and removed the blindfold. I'm not sure if the room I was in had an official name, but if it did, I assume it was The Scary Room of Horrible Awful Painful Death. Everywhere you looked, there was something that could hurt or kill you. And I'm not talking about multi-purpose objects, such as, say, a corkscrew, which could be used as an implement of torture but might be justified simply as a way to get a cork out. The objects in this room seemed specifically designed to cause pain or end lives. The room had metal walls and a metal floor, presumably for easy cleanup.

A very large gentleman sat in front of me, smoking a cigar. I use the word "large" to be polite, but your own mental image is welcome to be much less polite. Though I'll admit that he carried his weight well, there was a
lot
of it. He had a neatly trimmed grey mustache and goatee, which he stroked thoughtfully as he looked at me. I was pretty sure he was the aforementioned boss.

"Are you Josh White?" he asked me.

"Yes."

"731 Skylar Way, Apartment 230?"

"Yes."

"And you don't have a brother?"

"No."

The boss snapped his fingers. "Bring me the brother."

Baldy and Harry hurried out of the room. The boss just sat and stared at me as he smoked. I tried not to fidget.

They returned a moment later, pushing in a steel cage on wheels. A man about my age was crouched inside. His mouth was gagged, he had barely any room to move, and he was covered with perspiration. He also had bloody gauze stuck to his face in the nasal area and left-ear area.

The boss looked back and forth between the two of us.

"You're right," he finally said. "They're not related. We've got the wrong guy."

"Do we cap him?" Baldy asked.

The boss stroked his goatee some more. "When you snatched him from his apartment, did he say anything objectionable?"

"No," said Harry. "Actually, he was very cooperative. And not in a spineless pathetic way. I hate when they start begging and blubbering, but he didn't do any of that. It was more like his attitude was that he didn't want to come with us — which is only to be expected — but he didn't want to create unnecessary hardship."

"I'd agree with that," said Baldy.

"Hmmm." The boss considered that information. "You know what? Variety is the spice of life. Let's set him free."

I let out a sigh of relief.

"However," the boss said, causing me to suck the sigh back in, "we need to make sure he won't go to the cops."

"I won't go to the cops," I assured him. "We even talked about that earlier, back at my place."

"If you get the law involved, I will use no fewer than twelve of the tools in this room on you. Twelve. You may think that doesn't sound like many, but trust me, it's a lot."

"I trust you."

"Also," he said, causing me to suck in a second sigh, "we need to make sure you remember us. So I'm going to sever a body part. Your choice."

Baldy grinned at me. "You should choose your head."

"You think this is funny?" The boss stood up and smacked Baldy across the face. "A human being is about to lose a body part! Show some respect!"

Baldy rubbed his cheek and nodded. "Sorry."

The boss returned his attention to me. "Like I said, you pick the part. The obvious selection is your little toe, but I'll leave it up to you."

I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. "I, uh . . . when do I have to make a decision?"

"Right now."

"I can't . . . uh, I'm not . . . uh, I don't . . . does hair count?"

The boss shook his head.

"Not even eyebrows?"

"No."

"What if . . . what if instead of cutting off my little toe, you sewed an extra toe onto my foot? That would still be a disfigurement, right? You could get the same point across without actually removing anything from me."

The boss, Baldy, and Harry all stared at me for a very long time.

"I'll be honest with you," said the boss. "I've never heard an alternate suggestion quite that bizarre."

"It's messing with my mind," said Harry.

The boss shrugged and tossed his cigar to the floor. "Yes. Yes, I accept your proposal." He gestured to Baldy. "Go get me a sterilized needle and some thread." He gestured to Harry and kicked the side of the cage. "Pick me out something to cut his toe off with."

My heart sank. I hadn't considered the issue of where the additional toe would come from. "I changed my mind," I quickly said.

"Oh, no, I like your idea. I may start doing that from now on."

I was torn on how to proceed. Begging for the prisoner's toe to be saved would be the same as begging for my own toe to be removed. Speaking strictly in terms of equitable treatment, he'd lost a nose and an ear, and so it was only fair that I lose the toe. Yet at the same time, if he'd already lost two body parts, why not a third, especially if it was one that was usually hidden from public view?

"Isn't there somebody you've already killed whose toe you could use?" I asked.

"Stop talking," said the boss. "Or I
will
take your head."

I stopped talking.

I could describe what happened next, but you probably don't want to read about somebody getting his toe sawed off. Since it was the baby toe, I would have expected it to pop right off. It didn't. It's possible that the brother in the cage was simply thrashing around too much for it to be an efficient process, but even then I was astonished at the amount of resistance that one little toe put up. Maybe the razor was dull. Maybe the boss was purposely cutting slowly to drag out the excruciating pain. Maybe he was just sawing at a particularly bony part. I don't know. Regardless, it seemed like it took forever for the boss to finally remove it. He held up the bloody toe, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.

I'm also going to make the educated guess that you don't want to read about somebody having a toe sewn to their body, especially when the only numbing involved was rubbing an ice cube on the side of my foot for about a minute. I don't think the boss cared much about the pain; he just didn't want me to squirm as much. It still hurt worse than my last eight toe-stubbings combined. I tried to imagine that I was in a special magical land where I wasn't having somebody else's toe sewn onto me, but it didn't work because my mind kept saying "Hey! You're having somebody's toe sewn onto your foot, and it hurts!" I even tried to think about how it wasn't as bad as having my toe cut off. You'd think that would be a soothing thought, wouldn't you? Not at all.

Anyway, when the process was complete, I had one foot with five toes, and one with six. The sixth toe was right next to my little toe, sort of sticking out at an angle because my foot really didn't have sufficient room for it.

The boss admired his work. "Now, I expect you to leave that toe on," he said.

"I will."

"If my men come to check on you, they'd better count eleven toes."

"They will."

"I don't want to hear excuses about how it fell off."

"You won't."

The boss seemed satisfied. "Then you are free to leave."

* * *

In the past, whenever I'd thought about having an extra toe, which wasn't often, I'd assumed that it would improve my walking skills. Not to a huge extent — I wouldn't be able to walk up walls or anything — but perhaps it would provide a bit of extra traction or something. That wasn't the case. I was practically limping as they led me out of the room in my blindfold, and when they dropped me off at my apartment I almost tripped three different times going up the stairs.

At least I was safe.

I wasn't sure what to do with the nose and ear. Best to just throw them away, I guessed. I opened the refrigerator, took out the baggie, and walked over to the garbage bin.

Then I stopped.

Back in the boss's lair, there was a man in a cage. They'd cut off his nose, ear, and toe. Once they found his real brother, they'd probably cut off more.

I couldn't just let that happen, could I?

I was no hero. Still, I knew right from wrong. And leaving that poor soul to die was wrong.

They'd told me not to call the police. But they hadn't told me that I couldn't try to rescue him myself.

I owed it to the poor disfigured man in the cage to at least
try
to save his life, didn't I?

But how? How could I save somebody when I didn't know where he was being held?

I closed my eyes, concentrated hard, and tried to recreate all of the car's turns in my mind. It started with a . . . left? Right?

This wasn't going to work. After returning the baggie to the refrigerator, I went into my bedroom and searched through my dresser drawers for a blindfold to help better recreate my experience. I didn't remember ever having bought one, but it wasn't necessarily a purchase that would stand out in my memory. I didn't search for very long, though, and settled for tying a black sock over my eyes, which seemed to have the same effect.

I tried again to recreate the turn schedule. The first turn had been . . . right. No. Left. Maybe it was a slight veering rather than an actual turn.

I removed the makeshift blindfold. This wasn't going to work.

What could I possibly do? I knew nothing about the man in the cage.

Except the name of his brother.

They were looking for Josh White. I was Josh White, but there could easily be more of us. I raced to the phone book and flipped through the W section. There were five Josh Whites, and long list of J Whites.

I called Josh White #1. I wondered if he had caller ID, in which case it would look like he was receiving a phone call from himself. That would be memorable.

"Hello?" a man answered after the fourth ring.

"Mr. White?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have a brother?"

"No."

"Thank you."

The second Josh White wasn't home, although his wife sounded nice. She wouldn't tell me if he had a brother. She might have been concerned that I was going to say that I was his long-lost brother and ask for money or something.