The Sapphire Express (20 page)

I was begging for mercy, but then I saw the slim man rise from his shallow grave, and he started running through the dark forest with a dirty needle hanging from his bruised arm. He was naked, and the tree branches were beating his bony corpse like thousands of merciless boatswain’s whips. His face was bleeding hard, and half his nose fell on a plump Amanita muscaria, but the slim man just kept running. A starving fox appeared from a dark hole and ate the mushroom and then the nose. The slim man was now running faster and faster, and he turned onto the road that led to my house. Blood started dripping from his broken teeth, and he began pulling his hair out like it had caught hell’s fire. He was at my door now, and he kicked it in and ran into my bedroom and started strangling me with his skeletal fingers.

I jumped up like there was an angry adder under my pillow and wept louder than a GODDAMN baby. My heart was beating like it wanted to break free and run out of that torture chamber that my body had transformed into. Cold sweat was flowing down my face freely, and I was absolutely certain that my brain had been poisoned with expired cyanide. I was scared to death, and I ran to the kitchen, fear breathing on my exposed neck, and opened a bottle of vodka and drank the whole goddamn thing in less than twenty minutes. I didn’t want to be scared anymore.

After the Stolichnaya had driven away the powerful demon and convinced my heart that it could finally stop panicking, I took a second shower and washed my hands with bleach again. I felt so dirty and disgusting that I was afraid I would never be clean again. The murder of the garbageman had awakened something truly frightening in me, and I felt like yet another part of me had died. I just wanted to forget everything and sleep forever, but I knew that the one-armed man would make sure that any hope for a sweet slumber was buried under a heavy pile of burning rocks.

Because of my fragile mental state, I didn’t do much during the next couple of weeks. I just read my history book and pleasured myself every other day with my homicidal hands. I was like a zombie on autopilot, and I hadn’t even checked the news for any information on the garbageman’s disappearance. I didn’t care about him or the police anymore, and the paranoia of a novice murderer had exited my body like a guest who had begun to smell. I took the Econoline for a spin whenever I wanted to, and my heart didn’t even skip a beat when a police car stopped right next to me. I tried to keep the murders out of my mind the best I could, but it was difficult, and I had to keep cleaning and washing like crazy just to remain sane. The images of violence and pain tried to infiltrate my brain like an army of starving cockroaches, and I was scared shitless of the arrival of the terrors of the night. I desperately wanted to travel to a new place, a place where my guns and knives were no longer needed. I didn’t want to kill anymore, and I knew that the garbageman had been my last victim—or so I thought.

10

Wolf City

It had been sixteen days since the death of the garbageman, and I knew that it was time to go see Ramses. I wanted to get my money and get fabulously drunk in the process. I also needed to see dirty, disgusting people, compare myself to them, and hopefully feel a little cleaner, a little more adorable. Johnny D’s was the perfect place for that mission since 99 percent of its clientele was either dirty on the outside or on the inside—or both. I also knew that I wasn’t the only murderer who visited that fine establishment, and that made me feel a little better than sitting in a church with a bunch of singing nuns.

The Econoline arrived at the potholed parking lot near the promised land at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon, and I opened the door so salvation with a childish eagerness. Ramses was cleaning the floors with a dirty mop and a bucket of water that was darker than the murkiest cypress swamps of the silent Everglades. The bar was empty, and I was, unexpectedly, the only murderer there, I think.

“I believe you are making the floor dirtier that it was,” I said to Ramses.

The greasy man turned his head quickly and looked at me with bewildered eyes and asked, “Where the hell have you been, man? Don’t disappear on me like that.”

“You said that it takes two weeks to get the money. I had no reason to come here before that. I need my alone time, OK? I did the same thing with the consultant, don’t you remember?”

“Uh, OK, but the bosses are worried.”

“Why?”

“Because they haven’t been able to confirm that, uh, let me close the door,” he said and walked to the front door and locked it. Then he sat down on a ripped barstool next to me and said, “They haven’t been able to confirm that Covington is gone. They suspect that you made a deal with the target.”

“What the fuck is this, Ramses? I handled the job exactly the same way as I handled the previous one. What’s different this time?”

“Look, all I know is that they want to have a little powwow tonight and talk to you about Covington and confirm your story before they give you your money, OK?”

“How did they know that I would be here tonight?”

“They didn’t. They told me to tell you this when you come here. You are a priority.”

I didn’t say anything.

Ramses looked at me moodily and said, “If they are happy with your answers, you will get your money. I can promise you that. Trust me.”

“So the bosses are coming to meet me?”

“No, but they will send someone.”

“OK. Where and when?”

“A strip club called Wolf City. Nine o’clock tonight. Don’t be late.”

“OK, but I need you to be there, too, Ramses.”

“Why?”

“Just fucking be there, OK?”

“OK, OK, I’ll be there.”

“Good, now give me a couple of godfathers and shut the fuck up.”

“Coming right up, sir,” he said and started mixing the drinks with trembling hands.

“Do you have any bratwurst?” I asked after a moment of mutually beneficial silence.

“No, not today, but I have these new chicken sausages, if you want to give it a try.”

“OK, bring me one.”

Ramses gave me my two godfathers and disappeared into the kitchen. After about five minutes of cooking, he came back with a plate that had two small sausages on it and some Bavarian mustard on the side.

“They are tiny bastards, aren’t they?” I said.

“Yeah, just taste them.”

I took a bite and said, “It tastes like rattlesnake.”

“What, what do you mean?”

“Yeah, you know, I was once at this horse ranch in Scottsdale, and the cowboys grilled a big rattlesnake over a wood fire for the excited guests. They urged everyone to try it and emphasized that it tastes like chicken. And they were right. It did taste like chicken. My point is that if rattlesnake tastes like chicken, then chicken must taste like rattlesnake.”

“Uh, OK, I see,” Ramses said and started mixing something truly terrifying in a large red bowl.

“What in the Sam Hill is in that poor bowl?” I asked after watching him for a couple of minutes.

“Riot punch. Do you wanna try it?”

“Uh, honestly, it sounds like something that is designed for idiots. What’s in it?”

“It’s a secret recipe, but I can tell you that it ain’t your typical funeral punch, even if it might send you to an early grave. I am going to serve it to the regulars tomorrow. You know, we host this annual event for our most loyal customers, and I always serve the riot punch. It drives them absolutely batshit crazy, but that’s what they want. Normally the cops arrive around eleven and shut the place down, but it’s fun. You should come.”

“No, thanks. Save the punch for your loyal customers. I am sure they have earned it.”

“Speaking of loyal customers, I need to unlock the door,” Ramses said and went to valiantly release the floodgates.

He opened the heavy door lazily, and a dozen tired souls walked in with their dry lips and wrinkly dollars like a squad of soldiers returning from the urban battlefield. Some of them looked like regular folks with a budding drinking problem, but most of them had strayed far, far away from the Creator’s original, well-intentioned design. It was all good, though. The customers came to Johnny D’s as they were. All you needed was money and a liver that still had some steam left.

Around 7:30 p.m., a man in a dirty top hat walked up to me and asked, “Have you heard about that thing in the old continent?”

“No,” I said.

“Yeah, man, the nuclear plants, man. Fucking cybercriminals hacked them all. We are screwed. We are all dead, man.”

“OK, can I please finish my drink now?”

“Enjoy while you can, man. Enjoy while you can,” he said and disappeared into the darkness of the smoky bar.

I figured that the man in a top hat was just another crackhead on the verge of losing his mind, so I didn’t give his words much thought. There was an oversupply of senseless bullshit at Johnny D’s, and most things the crazies spat out weren’t worth a nanosecond of my time.

Fortunately, no one else wanted to talk to me, and I ordered another godfather and asked Ramses to turn the TV on. He handed me the remote and a complimentary shot of rye, and I took a comfortable position on my stool and started watching the news.

There was no talk about any nuclear disaster, as I had already guessed, but I still wanted to see what was going on in the unpredictable world of people. I sucked the last drops of my drink with a tiny straw and started flipping the channels with the greasy remote. I kept going until I noticed that something interesting was happening on the weather channel. A husky meteorologist in a nice tailored suit was telling the viewers about a storm that was forming in the eastern Atlantic. The man was confused because the disturbance behaved unlike anything he had ever seen before, and he said that the fast-moving system was a freak of nature and admitted that he couldn’t predict what exactly was going to come out of it. All signs, however, pointed to the storm of a century, and the outlook was disturbing. The weatherman didn’t say it, but I knew that a monster was being born.

I continued watching the story until the dusty clock on the wall hit eight thirty, and I turned the TV off. It was go time. Wolf City was about fifteen minutes from Johnny D’s, and I wanted to get there a little early so I could check out the scene and choose my own seat. I didn’t like strip clubs, and I wanted to sit as far from the pole as possible. In my opinion, they were places where the worship of money was so brutally intense and suffocating that humanity and compassion had simply given up and left. The thought that I was tolerated and treated like a human being only because I had a stupid piece of plastic in my pocket, made me want to strangle myself.

I raised my finger and Ramses walked to me sluggishly. I looked at him with my fox’s eyes and said, “I am going to Wolf City now. Are you sure you are going to be there?”

“Yeah, man. They’ll send someone to pick me up. My cousin Sammy will take care of the bar.”

“OK, I’ll see you soon, then.”

“OK, man.”

I left the bar and walked to the Econoline. I opened the rear door and took the Sig Sauer from the hunting bag and put it in the glove box. Then I drove to Wolf City and reluctantly walked into that sinful shithole that I already knew I was going to hate.

I sat down at a lonely table far from the pole at exactly 8:50 p.m. and noticed that there were only a handful of customers in the club. An older stripper was dancing on the stage apathetically, and a couple of filthy men were stuffing wrinkled dollar bills into her panties with sticky fingers. I sighed hard and ordered a bottle of ten-dollar water and told the cocktail waitress to keep the strippers away from me. I gave her two hundred dollars to make sure that she would do exactly what I had asked her to do and didn’t let her out of my sight until she went to talk to the girls who were standing at the bar. I didn’t need a private show or anything else that night. I just wanted to get my money and get the fuck out of Wolf City.

At 9:05 p.m., Ramses arrived with two men in identical black leather jackets. One was bald, and the other one was half-bald. They were burly boys, and it looked like intelligence wasn’t their strongest asset. I knew that I shouldn’t have judged the book by its cover, but when the cover had a picture of a steaming pile of dog shit on it, I was going to fucking judge it. Their stupidity was probably a good thing from my perspective, but it worried me a little that the bozos weren’t, most likely, capable of engaging in a meaningful conversation where both sides had a chance to explain their positions. That was dangerous because it could easily lead to misunderstandings and overreaction. Stupidity seemed to always have that same effect, and I had grown tired of dealing with it.

The leather duo sat down, and I said, “What do you want to know, assholes?”

The goons looked at each other, and then they looked at Ramses. He shrugged, and then they all looked at me, and the half-bald man said, “We need to see the body, right now.”

“Do you have the money?”

“It’s in the car.”

“I want to see the money before I take you anywhere. Is that clear?”

“OK, let’s go,” the half-bald said, and we all got up.

The trio walked swiftly out of the club, and I followed them to a black Jaguar. The bald one opened the trunk and showed me a bag full of money. “It is all there,” he said and spat a faded Juicy Fruit on the ground.

I looked inside the bag and picked up a couple of bundles of clean fifty-dollar bills. It was real money, and it looked like the amount I had been promised.
Good.

“OK, boys,” I said. “Now, you jump into your cat, and I’ll follow you to the place you wanted to see.”

“We don’t know where it is, dimwit,” the half-bald man said like he was talking to an idiot.

“I will call Ramses’s phone and give him directions as we drive.”

“Why can’t we just follow you?”

“I want to make sure that the money stays where it is, OK? Unless, of course, you want to give it to me right now.”

The goons looked at each other and the bald one said, “OK, asshole, we do it your way.”

“Good. Ramses, give me your number, and I will call you right now.”

Ramses gave me his number, and I started walking toward the Econoline while entering the number on my phone. He answered after the first beep, and I hopped into the van and started giving instructions to the nasty band of brothers.

After about an hour of driving, the Jaguar arrived at the chain link gate, and I said on the phone, “It’s not locked. Remove the chain, and you are good to go.”

Ramses got out of the car, removed the chain, and glanced at me briefly like a nervous deer. Then we started driving again, and a strange calmness suddenly filled my lonely heart. The forest was my friend again, and all the hostility I had experienced when I murdered the garbageman was gone. I felt like it wanted to protect me and remind me that I was still the chosen one, the one who could enjoy its magic and bury bodies there with its blessing whenever I wanted to. The forest was my kingdom, and the uninvited guests had no idea what lay beneath.

After about twenty minutes of traveling on the dark forest road, the familiar oak emerged from the darkness like Death’s watchman, and the steel cat stopped in front of the tree. I picked up the phone and said to Ramses sternly, “Get out of the car.”

“OK,” he said, and I put the Econoline in park and pulled the Sig out of the glove box. Then I jumped out like a voracious panther and started walking toward the Jaguar determinedly. The trio got out of the car, and Ramses pulled out his Marlboros and gave one cigarette to each of his new friends. The two baldies started patting their pockets like idiots, but they stopped when Ramses pulled out a small disposable lighter and offered to light the cigarettes. The moronic troika huddled around the little flame and tried desperately to get their smokes to catch fire in the wind that already smelled like death. I shrugged and shot the bald man through his skull. Then I aimed at the half-bald man and shot through his left eye. They both fell on the ground like two useless sacks of rotten potatoes, and I put four more bullets in them and said to Ramses, “Remove all your clothes, right now, or you will die.”