Frank Sinatra in a Blender (25 page)

Epilogue

Sunlight melted the snow
in soft patches at the house on
Whitmer Road.

Tree trimmers and electricians worked to cut down limbs and restore power to the houses damaged by the ice storm. A one-ton truck the color of rust lifted a worker in the air with a bucket to remove a branch from a downed power line.

He cut it free with his saw and it fell to the frozen street where his grounds man disposed of it. The wood chipper lurched brutally as the limbs fed through and belched out wads of splinters and ice. The sound of the powerful chipper mixed with the roar of chainsaws up and down the neighborhood streets blended to create a potent symphony with enough excitement to arouse even the most grizzled lumberjack.

Next to the empty house wrapped in police tape sat an overgrown lot with piled-up brush and a few trees that could just as soon be cut down as let grow. Voices shouting in the distance fought to be heard over heavy equipment.

Inside the garage a Ford Taurus rocked from side to side until the trunk finally popped open and creaked eerily in the stillness of the room. English Sid climbed out, making sounds of pain and discomfort.

He’d been curled up for twelve hours, maybe more. He didn’t have a watch; his phone was in the Lexus. After he plugged Doyle, he didn’t have time to run. He climbed into the trunk. Waited it out. He counted on the incompetence of the police department to overlook such an obvious detail as the car, which was fine.

I counted on that too.

He looked out through the windows in the top of the door then stumbled toward the chalk outline of Doyle’s body. He walked by the fridge and I stepped out of the darkness, struck him in the right ear with a pulverizing blow from the production end of a roofing hammer.

Sid went down to the floor and his head found concrete. Blood raced from his ear, ran into his eye, covering the white with a thin veneer that looked like juice from crushed cherries.

“That really looked like it hurt,” I told him.

I wedged the claw end of the hammer in his mouth and stood up, yanked him hard. I fishhooked the inside of his cheek, bent his teeth in, and forced him to choke on blood. His cheek ripped loose as I pulled him to the front of the Taurus and bound his hands securely.

If there was one thing I believed in firmly it was good-quality rope. When in the market for good rope, one must consider such characteristics as tensile strength and flexibility. You don’t want your subject to slip out of the knot you tied because you grabbed some cheap rope off the dollar shelf. Superior quality is what I demand in a binding rope, and a thorough knowledge of knots is an absolute must.

I rolled Sid on his back and tied him to the bumper. Blood poured from the wound, covering his face and neck like winding lines of a roadmap. Sid’s ear was deformed; a chunk of his cartilage protruded out in a twisted pink knot of flesh. I asked Sid if he could hear me.

“
Remember me, asshole?
I really hope you can hear me, you English prick.” I pushed him hard and his head moved. His left eye blinked, then rolled up under his eyebrow.

“Well, I’m afraid I’ve got some pretty bad news for you, Sid. It’s all pretty fucking bad actually. I’m not really sure where to start.” I rapped on the side of his head, his eye sprang open, but he couldn’t focus. He drifted in and out of various levels of awareness.

“Anyway, guess I’ll go head’n start with the worst news first. I want you to know I’m gonna cut your legs off with a chainsaw, Sid. Actually, it’s my Stihl.” I patted the little engine with my gloved hand and Sid’s leg moved forward, he mumbled pathetically.

“Ah, that’s a good sign! You can’t talk I guess, but at least you can understand what I’m saying. That’s excellent news.”

Sid continued to blink his eye but he couldn’t keep the blood out.

I stood up and walked the garage. I needed to stretch my legs after all that standing around, waiting for that prick to get out of the trunk.

I pulled my left glove off, lifted up my mask. “I gotta say, your ex-girlfriend had pretty good taste in liquor.” I took a gulp of something I’d concocted in Angie’s kitchen involving rum, tequila, and butterscotch schnapps. “That’s one hell of a thing you did, shooting her in the tit like that.” Sid groaned, tried to speak. “Is that any way to treat a lady?”

He was a savage. A brute devoid of compassion or remorse. Whatever he got he had coming.

I told Sid, “Y’know, there’s just something remotely fascinating about cutting off another man’s legs with a chainsaw.
Especially if he’s still alive.
No, you won’t like it much, but considering the circumstances, I feel like it’s something that must be done.” Sid tried to move. “All that’s required is a trusty saw, some good quality rope, and a little strong will.” I squatted down, looked him in the eyes. “I might also suggest a bottle of Percocet for the pain. Not for you of course, but for me. Operating a chainsaw is tough work and it can play hell on the lower back.”

Sid came to about as far as his destroyed eardrum would allow. I told him a wallop to the head like that could make a man strange for the rest of his days. Not that he had many of those left.

I went through a checklist in my head.

Chainsaw,
check.

Good-quality rope,
check.

Percocet,
check.

•••••

I’d brought along on old cassette player
that I placed on top of the fridge. My intentions were to set the mood with some background music, create a little ambiance. I stepped on Sid’s ankle with all my weight and rolled it back and forth against the concrete. I asked him how he felt about Old Blue Eyes?

Snow fell in small pieces, drifting off branches far above, as tree trimmers notched trees and dropped limbs. The wood chipper barked obnoxiously but kept chipping, chewing up trees and making sawdust that blew in the wind and landed on top of yesterday’s snow.

There’d be no one around to hear the chainsaw howl when I started it up and filled the garage with the intoxicating aroma of 2-stroke smoke.

For a brief period I worked as a chainsaw salesman so I knew my way around a saw pretty well.

I explained to Sid that he wasn’t going to like this part very much, but I assured him he’d brought it upon himself by being such an asshole. I told him soon he’d be joining his pal No Nuts.

“Oh, that’s right, you probably didn’t know. I blew his head off with a shotgun earlier. Twice today actually, if you count the first time.”

Sid tried to grin, tried to speak. He gagged and spit blood, said Johnny was dead already.

I shrugged, said maybe he had a point.
“But still,”
I said. “We coulda worked together, split the money. But no, you sons-of-bitches had to start chopping people up and filling their socks with teeth.”

Sid drew a hard breath and held his right eye open long enough for blood to run down his chin, then fall onto his chest and disappear down his shirt.

“Don’t even think about begging.”

He nodded slowly like he understood. Drove his eyebrows together hard.

“I’m gonna walk you through this, Sid.” And I began a step-by-step tutorial of how I’d go about dismembering him. I used my practiced narrative, which was more than he deserved, but it took me back to my salesman days.

“You see, a chainsaw cuts best when it’s operated at full throttle. And it’s always in good form to bring the bar in straight and even. If you cut using the top of the guide bar, it’s important to exercise caution because the chain tries to push the saw back towards you, and failing to utilize proper form could result in a
kickback
.”

I told Sid nobody likes a kickback.

I continued the lesson. “If you use the bottom of the guide bar to cut, the saw pulls itself toward the muscle and bone, and the front edge of the saw provides a natural rest while cutting. This action gives the operator better control of the saw and is generally the preferred method among lumberjacks and arborists alike.”

Sid began to mumble. He was finally beginning to realize the full potential of this sales pitch. I told Sid it was time to get to it and I hoped there was a special place in Hell for assholes like him that used other people’s heads as ashtrays.

Using my right thumb, I slid the on/off switch down into the choke position and engaged both the Throttle Trigger and the Throttle Interlock Release. I gave the saw a good shake, yanked the cord. I gave the Stihl another pull and this time the carburetor quickly filled with gas as the choke did its job. It almost turned over.

Sid tried to kick, but I’d anticipated such uncooperative behavior and secured his feet to the end of an old wooden bench with rope.

I hit play on the radio and waited for the big band to fire up those magnificent brass instruments and come to life. The chainsaw clutched in my firm uncompromising grip, the pull cord dangling, teeth waiting to chew flesh and marrow. Frank Sinatra started belting out
New York, New York
in that forceful, authoritative voice that commanded respect.

I sang along with the Chairman of the Board as the Stihl roared to life on the third pull.

“Start spreading the news. . .”
I dropped the splatter shield on my facemask and pushed the MS 270 Wood Boss into the tender meat of Sid Godwin’s left quadriceps. The wood Boss sank further into the muscle and a gleaming flash of red colored my shield in quick random bursts as I sawed through an artery and the bottom of the chain bit into the outside of his femur.

Sid’s body jumped and bucked, creating a challenge to say the least, so I offered him an earnest look that conveyed my cordial sympathies then I pushed the
attack
part of the bar deep into the exposed meat.

As I felt the teeth chew bone, the severed arteries pumped generous quantities of blood into the air and I had to let off the trigger to clear my mask. Squatting down gave me the opportunity to closely inspect my work, as rapid forceful spurts continued to pump copious amounts of his life-force, painting the garage door opener above us.

Sid’s eyes showed white, his body jerked viciously. The front of the Taurus shifted as blood ran from his foaming mouth, the end of his tongue bitten off. He choked and bled and died hard on the concrete.

•••••

Outside the garage, a white Chevy van with a crushed grill
was parked in front of the house. Signs on the van advertised Hesemann Landscape & Supply on each side. There were two orange cones behind the van and one in front.

Nobody thought twice about orange cones.

I carried my trusty Stihl in the plastic case in one hand, the other hand the radio.

Frank was waiting in the driver’s seat and he danced around excitedly, still favoring the foot, but his spirits were higher than I’d expected.

I told him to scoot over then I climbed behind the wheel. An aftershock from the painkiller sent a ripple of warm heat crawling up my spine.

We left the dead stripper’s house as the night came hard and sucked the energy from the day like a thousand-horsepower vacuum. The dark road was crawling with hungry people eager to escape their lives, toiling down the highway in their gas-powered metal coffins and searching for deliverance in a bottle, pipe, or a bag of white dope.

The lights of St. Louis called me in voice like broken glass. I knew in the darkest part of the city, people were shooting heroin and shooting each other. Women were getting raped, children were being beaten and molested. Tweakers robbed credit unions for plastic gangsters and men even cut up other men in empty garages for the things they’d done to have it end that way.

Frank rode on my lap all the way to Blackmore and I parked the van in the alley. I removed the magnetic signs and flung them in the back.

I leaned into the van and moved things around, finally started taking an inventory of what Doyle had back there. When I looked inside a roll of carpet the oxygen was sucked from my chest.

“Doyle, you old son-of-bitch.” I found stacks of cash in a wooden box under a stack of floor tiles, at least ten thousand inside a rubber boot, more than I could count hidden inside a stack of cones.

I grabbed a huge yellow bag I could throw over my shoulder and packed it with cash. It was the bag previously used to transport Doyle’s revolting suits back and forth to the cleaners.

I expected the image of Doyle’s blown-apart face would haunt me longer than I wanted it too, then I thought about that cocksucker I’d just cut in half and left tied to the bumper of a Ford Taurus.

Chief Caraway wouldn’t look too hard, and Amish Ron would just figure Sid got coming what was owed.

“Ready, Frank?” I walked around to the front and grabbed that little shit. When I looked under the seat my eyes came to rest on a stunning discovery and I laughed hard enough to damage at least three of my internal organs. That fucking Doyle would steal anything.

I carried the chainsaw in my left hand. My right held a big purple dildo.