by Beau Johnson
But power it had—the building not as abandoned as it appeared on paper.
Under the cover of night, we exit the van.
Inside, I hug the shadows to the right. Batista, the left, the big man tugging at his Kevlar like it didn’t quite fit. We advance, long-dead conveyer belts and line hooks now separating us. I angle toward the small room showing light. Weapons up, we take sides on the door, and on three, Batista kicks it in.
We move fast, Glocks up, but Murphy, bald as Lane said he’d be, he greets us not as adversaries but as something else entirely. “Gentlemen, how may I be of service?”
Sometimes the crazy, it’s just too fucking crazy.
“On the ground! Now!” Batista is having none of it, and Murphy, yellow surgical gown slick with blood, he does the opposite of what my gut told me he would: steps back from the steel table and the small body he’d been working on and lowers himself to his knees. “Please keep in mind the time frame,” he says. “The kidneys are in especially high demand this time of year.”
It’s enough. And Batista doesn’t even hesitate as he puts a bullet into the backs of each of Murphy’s thighs once he’s reached him. The man howls, screams, but rolling over, Batista remains undeterred, his Glock deep into Murphy’s mouth until the man can do nothing but blink.
There’s more, of course. Loads. And it does take some doing. Murphy more uncooperative a participant than we’d had in quite some time. His soft spot, however—which Batista removes by twos—is what gets him talking. I’d like to say it surprised me too, what he says, but I can’t, as very little surprised me anymore. It didn’t change things either, only prolonged them, placing us as it did onto new paths with new obstacles that needed to be taken apart because self-interest and greed, they’re never mutually exclusive, not when people who lack empathy are involved. They need more. Always will.
For truth, they want it all.
Cahill once caught a swordfish so large his hometown paper felt they had to place it front page. His wife and high school sweetheart, once she becomes a surgeon as well, they give her the same treatment. Combined, their annual income sat at just shy of half a million on a bad year.
Did they need more? Apparently so.
“I want you to choose your words carefully, Walt. You do, this ends quick and with minimal pain. You don’t, I guarantee you’ll come to regret finding out what the don’t will involve.” Batista lets the axe fall headfirst to the cabin floor. Even buffered by the rug, it draws each Doctor’s attention, but the only response we receive is from behind Marnie Cahill’s gag. She sits bound in a blue two-piece, him a red speedo, and I’d like to say it was her life that flashes before her eyes, that this moment in time was meant to be her vacation, her and Walt and two weeks upon this yacht, but no, I can’t say that it was. I only see fear.
“This side business, we know you didn’t start it. You took it over. I want the name of the person who sold it to you.”
Did he believe me?
We were about to find out.
I lower his gag. “Please, there must be some mis—”
The swing is fluid, the motion a blur, and Batista is down and into Marnie Cahill’s lower thigh bone before her husband can finish. Same as Cahill’s protests, blood spatter erupts in response, tagging not only the ceiling and sides of the cabin but Batista and me as well. Cahill’s eyes become like saucers, the veins on his neck up and standing like cord. He wants to kill us, needs to kill us, but Batista, he isn’t done. Then he is, and Cahill’s eyes, still like O’s, they can only focus on the part of his wife now on the floor. Inert, it continues to spurt, the dark stain advancing outwards on the carpet, gaining girth as well as speed. It’s surreal seeing appendages come to rest like that, and I admit as much, but like it or not, the Cahills only had themselves to blame.
Marnie Cahill herself, she goes into shock. Had been there for quite some time in fact, and unconscious, bleeds out as Cahill now more than ever does his best impression of a man caught up in a dream.
“Now that we have your attention.”
But he remains a man undone, his face slack, his smooth chest hitching intermittently. I take it as a sign. Batista as well. The big man up and back in action with a swing that arcs higher this time, encountering far less muscle but no less bone. The left side of Marnie Cahill’s face coming to lean awkwardly in the end, toward her husband’s right shoulder, pulled there by the weight of the axe and how it remained lodged under her cheekbone.
The names come easy after that—though we wouldn’t find out until later how unattainable each had become. When we do catch up with them, however, I do my best to keep my word and impart what I told Cahill I would a moment before Batista guts him and throws him to the sharks.
Like Cahill himself, I ensure they bleed.
Back to TOC
BOWELS IN, BOWELS OUT
No, don’t try to sit up. I’ll get you another pillow. Hmm, looks like you’ve come round too, I see. Well bully for you, let’s get you situated as well then. Don’t worry, I’ll explain everything. It’s sorta my thing.
First, I slipped a little something into your room service this morning. Those eggs, they taste a wee bit off? Of course they didn’t. This ain’t my first rodeo I’ll have you know.
Anyway, as you can plainly see, I’ve zip tied your hands at the wrist in front of you. I ask you to not make me regret this courtesy. Your ankles being bound too should put us on the same page, but lemme tell you, I have seen some shit. No one ever gets very far either, but the whole deal, it’s as unbecoming a situation as you’d think it’d be.
I’m making sense, right? I mean, you’re both looking at me like I might not know my stuff. Untrue. And quite frankly, Brad, I’m a little offended at the thought. I haven’t forgotten about you either, Jan, so maybe, in the spirit of fair play, you start eye-fucking the man to your right there, him being the one who put you in this whole mess.
That’s just speculation on my part too. Might be biased as well, and only because your husband here is your senior by quite a few years. Bottom line, it doesn’t negate the fact that you both made money off the backs of others.
The literal backs.
And to franchise the operation after the fact? I mean, who does that? How’s it even a thing? But do it you did. And here we are, the three of us caught up as we are. I don’t want you to think I’m the guy, either. I am, don’t get me wrong, but I’m part of a team. Like-minded individuals, you could say. People who are like you but unlike you at the same time. You think that’s a fair assessment, Jan? Am I being clear enough?
Fine. Let’s try it this way, then. Either of you movie fans? Yeah, me too. Your trip abroad, to Florence, it reminds me of this flick called Hannibal. In it, at this one part, Hannibal, this cannibal, he has this guy strung up and perched on a balcony. As he’s about to push this guy over, the Doctor asks: bowels in or bowels out? Something to that effect, anyway. Long way round, Lecter slices the man horizontal across the midsection and pushes him over the balcony. Three guesses as to what occurs once the noose pulls tight. You betcha. Niagara fucking Falls. But you know, if the Falls were a digestive system that ran on blood. And yes, I can read both your faces. I must admit, the concern, it bodes well. Really. But the good Doctor’s story, I have mentioned it for a reason.
Fine. A little more background then.
Imagine you have a younger sister, and then imagine that same young girl as she’s raped and murdered by six men in masks. It’s recorded too, this imagining, and comes to be distributed as well. Now imagine the police department you work for—how indifferent they seem to it all, and in the end, fail to bring justice to such an event. Brings us to the man of the hour—to the man whose very own experiences have brought you here today: Bishop Rider. Now Rider, he’s not the type of fella to take things lying down. Has some anger issues does dear old Bishop, but once you and his shoes have walked a mile, it’s clear to see how things have escalated over time. Th
e man making it his life’s mission to find not only his family’s killers but anyone remotely similar along the way.
Makes sense? Each of you understands?
Good.
Now, to recap.
1) Some time ago, Rider is given a lead. Following this lead, he comes across a man by the name of Manson Lane. This Lane is fucking a corpse when he and Rider first meet. This corpse, you guys, it’s missing organs. Ah, I see I finally have someone’s attention as I should. Hold tight, though, I’m almost done.
2) This leads Rider to another man, a surgeon for hire by the name of Murphy. Sound familiar? Nah, didn’t think it would. Heard he was a replacement of sorts. He gives up two more names before he leaves this world though. Care to hazard a guess as to who he mentions? Yeah, I wouldn’t either. Not with everything coming together as it is.
3) Rider and Batista, Batista being, and get this, Rider’s old partner from his time as a cop, track down these names, Walt and Marnie Cahill, to their yacht, and the four of them, they take a nice comfortable ride out to sea. Again, any guesses as to what they talked about?
Yeah, looks like you might. And with perfect timing too. Ain’t small, is he? Also, that black bag he’s holding? It holds exactly what you think it does. But don’t worry, I’m leaving you in good hands, hands that at one time were a medic in a war us three know jack shit about. It means he isn’t going to hang you guys from this hotel room like in that movie I mentioned. Nothing as preposterous as that. No, Bishop here, he likes to keep things old school, and like the Cahills before you, he’s set on taking you apart. You know, like you and the Cahills after you, how you did it to, oh I don’t know, countless others over the years.
It means you’re about to bleed, my friends.
One goddamn organ at a time.
Back to TOC
BEFORE THE STORM
There actually was a time I favored more conservative methods when extracting information. Not quite naïve, no, but perhaps less committed as I’d one day become. Either way, once Alex starts up the chainsaw and is a quarter of the way through Benny’s right knee, we’re given the name we’d been looking for. Both arms, the other leg, and the cauterization of all four is just a bonus, so when we do eventually introduce Benny to the Hudson, he ends up knowing a little bit of what his victims went through, there as he sinks like a stone. Not even close to fair by far, but this world, Culver especially, it has never been one to play fair.
Not when evil was involved. Not even close.
“I gotta say, Bishop. If I couldn’t see it, I wouldn’t have believed it.” I look to Alex, so young, so removed, and far from the middle-aged man who sells me out to a shit-stain by the name of Mapone. Far from the crying, snivelling piece of shit who would cost me part of a leg. Far from unexpectedly taking a knife to the gut from an advancing Batista. And far from falling from the second-floor walkway of the Super 8 we track him to. Further still: his innards not yet married to the hitch of my van and my foot not yet kissing the floor. We’re years from this, millennia, but it would happen. It does happen. I retain the prosthetic as proof.
But here, now, from beneath blond hair as greasy as ever and mostly covered by a grey hoodie, Alex takes in what I take in: the very things we hoped we wouldn’t find. To our left are the cages they held the children in, to our right the dirty mattresses they violated them on. Further back, upon TV tables: dog collars, sex toys, and what for me becomes the hardest to reconcile: the swing.
Behind us, zip tied and unaccepting of her coming fate, Brenda Curr tries her best to plead a case for that swing. I don’t let her, not as she’d like. I lower the sawed-off instead, down onto the bridge of her nose, and in one quick moment, as it braces for impact, watch as the front of her face becomes the back of her head.
Upstairs is a different monster altogether, the uncirculated air a mix of weed, rotting meat, and more than just dishes in need of a wash. It wasn’t new either, none of it, but for the time being, in this small part of the world at least, an intermission was about to occur, one that I hoped would give other pieces of shit pause. Again, conservative? Yes, perhaps I was.
In the kitchen, faceup on dirty linoleum, lay the man Benny gave up. Shirt open and zip tied as well, he’s running toward obese and sports the type of beard that isn’t really a beard at all.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Frank. I feel you’re telling the truth, Alex here, he remains in place behind me. I feel any type of bullshit come into the air, the kid, he’s going to be hard-pressed to leave you with teeth.” His eyes went wide long ago, but he nods that he understands. “I might be wrong here too, Frank, but it just feels off that foster parents could get away with this for as long as the two of you have. I mean, some of those videos are date-stamped at over a decade old. Makes me think you had help along the way. You see where it is I’m going with this, Frank?”
For a wonder, he did.
Most times, we get pushback. Fuckers who felt (for a little while, at least) they could handle whatever was coming their way. Not Frank. Not even close. Spills faster than his head can shake it seems. Gives us two more names in the link of a chain we’d been chasing for months. Done, Alex moves in and, courtesy of his size elevens, relieves Frank first of his teeth, then his orbital bones, there as his brain pan is pulped into mush.
Looking back, the kid had heart. If anything, I had to give him that.
It doesn’t take long after that, Batista giving me the addresses a day after I give him the names. Four days later and Alex and I have the last of them up in chains in a basement much like the one Brenda Curr loses her face in. I’d like to say each man learned something from what we took from them that night. I’d like to say it made some small part of everything they put into motion right. I couldn’t, though. Not then. Not now. What I could say was this: it wasn’t over.
As I told Batista: things had just begun.
Back to TOC
UPSTANDING CITIZENS
Of the two safehouses we had set up throughout the city, Buchannan in Boyle Heights and the Ronson place in the valley, each played large parts in not only holding weapon caches but affording certain privacies when disposal techniques and a few other options were in unusually high demand. A third safehouse, a split-level ranch that sat adjacent to Culver’s version of LAX, would come into play as well, but not until Jeramiah enters our lives. With him, Jeramiah brings money, new connections, and a hate comparable to my own. I would fight it at first too, and only because of who his father had been, but in time I accept the fact and for longer than expected we do some good.
Now was not that time.
Now was me with both my legs, Batista with most of his face, and Alex still on our side of the equation.
Springtime in Vienna, indeed.
“Eleven arrests. Out of them all, how many do you think lawyered up?”
We’re at the Ronson place, and Batista, he’s climbing into the passenger side of the van as he asks me the question. He’s in his civies, dark pants and a tan jacket, his dark beard cropped and trimmed as always. It’s almost midnight, the sky is clear, but what was about to begin was not. “Ten,” he states. “Leaving one fucking asshole who might as well have made a sign. And I know you want me to say it, so yeah, you were right.” Of course I was. Had said so some time ago. A small house-cleaning expedition Alex and I partook in a few months back being what set things in motion. A man named Benny leading us to Frank and Brenda Curr, foster parents who’d been disguising themselves as human. We find cages in the basement, along with recording equipment and props I try not to think about. In the end, we remove them from this world in ways they deserved but not before the husband gives up two more names. It’s these dirtbags—pieces of shit Alex and I take care of in the basement of the house Batista and I sat in front of now—that creates the link that kickstarts us looking into Kingdale Foster Agency.
“Wasn’t going to say I told you so, but yeah, I told you so.” It gets a s
mile, but the big man puts it away and then takes out his notepad.
“Kyle Raymond Lahey, forty-two, single, no priors. 1612 Donegal, between Bellevue and Park. Been at Kingdale nine years this October, taking over from a one Jerome Jensen last year as the big kahuna in charge of placement. They released him an hour ago.”
“Flight risk?”
“I can see the man as no other kind. I’m also sure they have units sitting on him as we speak.”
“I take it you have something in mind.” He did. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. Wired notepad exchanged for a tablet, he fires it up, and in seconds I’m looking at Lahey’s place from above.
“Backdoor it is, then,” I say.
We wait an hour past the time the last of Lahey’s lights go out. His house backed onto another property, it and that residence sharing a fence. It’s not this fence we watch Lahey clamber over, however, but the streetside one we are parked some thirty feet from.
“Well, would you look at that.” I do, and neither of us moves, each waiting to see where it leads. Black duffel bag at his side, Lahey is dressed head to boot in black, and for a moment I think he sees us. Not so. The man just reaches into his pants for keys. It’s here I start to believe he may be smarter than he appeared, or at least more prepared.
Lights off until we clear the side streets, we follow him into the valley, and then across and into Culver’s East side. Twenty minutes past this and we watch from afar as he pulls into a street ending in a cul-de-sac, parking beside a Beemer in the driveway of the middle house. The porch light coming on as soon as he exits the vehicle.