Brand New Dark

by Beau Johnson

  It’s as far as he gets, and looking back, I’d say it was the industry remark that set Jeramiah off. Lester instantly knocked unconscious by the initial hammer blow and removed from the board by the time parts of his jaw start hitting the floor. Beyond this, it’s business as usual, and as we feed him into another of Ray’s additions, we make it like he never was.

  We turn him to ash.

  Of average height and with a better than average build, Carbone wore the type of porn mustache I envisioned before I even saw his sheet. Two gold teeth up top, I see them, myself, and a hammer at play sometime in the future. The far future, as it turned out. The safehouse on Drummond and the men destroyed within coming back to block us from going after Carbone once we’d gathered our intel. CCPD’s investigation linking Carbone to four of the seven bodies they find within the rubble.

  Made the man off-limits in other words.

  Which was fine, as similar obstacles had surfaced before. Besides, we had other irons in the fire. A man by the name of Jonker, for instance—his release after eighteen years at Millhaven for destroying his daughter’s life enough to occupy our time. Beyond him, Jeramiah traces an IP address that leads to a pocket house that takes some doing but eventually yields three drugged-up ten-year-olds before we burn it and the men we find inside to the ground.

  More. Always more.

  And then Reggie Carbone, just like that, he’s back in play—the man’s original request for bail overturned as a new trial date is set.

  “The window is small,” I tell Jeramiah. “But the window is there.”

  He agrees, and then in a tone that reminds me of Batista, “You’re goddamn right.”

  The bedroom isn’t so dark we can’t see. It smells of garlic and sweat and beer well past its sell-by date. A partially pulled blind behind him, Jeramiah stands to one side of a snoring Carbone while I stand on the other. Above the man, clasped to his headboard, hangs a reading lamp. Switching it on, Carbone wakes instantly, no lag, but Jeramiah, prepared to a fault, has his bat to the man’s chest just as fast. Down and leaning upon it, “Not so fast, Reggie.”

  The man subsides, back and easy into a grease-stained pillow, then unleashes a smile I’d seen before. Most times, when these scenarios play out, they progress as they should, but every once in a while, you find a shitbird who doesn’t quite get the program. Or chooses to buck the system the only way they know how.

  Reading the situation for what it was, we do what needs to be done and remedy Carbone of this oversight.

  “You’re too late! You’re too late!” He laughs/screams as we bring each bat down upon him, his arms breaking as tries to protect himself, cracking as we each take a turn. Escalating, the man continues to scream and tries his best to rise, but his forehead, it does more than get in the way, it relents, as both those gold teeth are given the type of freedom they deserve. Downward becomes a whole other story, and in time we enter into a rhythm that not only alternates between releasing fluids and pulping bone but relocates ribs in such a way that even through the blood and viscera we recognize the man’s breastbone for what it is.

  We take the moment. Our Kevlar covered and slick with him, we take the moment.

  Our combined effort exposing and then obliterating his only organ to remain.

  Isn’t until months later that we come to understand the meaning behind Reggie’s words, however. Already set in motion, my name and picture had been released and circulated to a certain group of people being what it boiled down to. People in the same type of “industry” Reggie made the bulk of his money from. I believe he thought it had a chance of working too, and in a way it did—them searching for us as opposed to us coming for them—just not the way I assume he intended it.

  It’s not a total win either, and even though the ones unwise enough to come after us end up losing more in the process than we do, it comes at a price.

  Unfortunately for one of us, it’s more than a leg this time.

  Back to TOC

  DAYS OF BODY PARTS PAST

  I want to say I wasn’t there the day Neal Hightower takes Ray from the world. I want to say I don’t watch as he hoists what remained of my old friend by the hair, and from the third-floor balcony of an abandoned Red Roof Inn launches his head toward me while he, Hightower, still wore mirrored Ray-Bans. I could say these things, and I want to, but I can’t, not as the men stepping forward from behind him turn their weapons upon me. They aren’t professional either, not by the look of them, and of the three, Hightower was the only one in a suit. These other two, in three-quarter-length tees and jeans, and except for the steel in their hands, they reminded me of men who have failed to launch and end up taking out their parents’ garbage deep into their forties.

  From on high, his voice flat against the enclosure, “I told you this would happen, Rider. I warned you to leave well enough alone.” True. All of it. The phone call I receive from Ray’s burner coming from Hightower himself.

  I have your man. Come for him or not. I don’t care. And these rules you seem to have, Rider, now that we know who you are, know they no longer apply.

  He then gives me an address, this boarded-up motel, and to be there by four.

  Any later and you might not get to say goodbye.

  It gave me under forty minutes to get from the heart of Culver to the east side of it. No time to plan. No time to slip in early and set up a hit. I’d worked with less before, sure, and I hoped to again, but if there’s one thing I’ve never been, it’s naive.

  I prepared for the end.

  Situation being what it was, I pretty much had to.

  Unknown to any of us, it starts months before and spirals out of control before a window is found to remove Reggie Carbone from the board. Reggie himself, he’d made his way into our orbit through what Jeramiah called “days of body parts past”: a job I sent one-armed Billy on years prior snowballing into what this had become—a scenario I never could have predicted.

  One failsafe detonation later, the safe house on Drummond and seven of Carbone’s men within it, we catch a glimpse of what we’d end up coming to face for years. In the time it takes us to piece things together, Reggie circulates my face and name to a certain group of men. People who were a bit more organized than your average pedophile and held a vested interest in ensuring my lungs got filled with something other than air.

  People just like Hightower. A man as textbook as they came.

  Human trafficking. Rape. Indifferent to all things empathy-based and, as of roughly thirty seconds ago, murderer of a man who’d once used his body as a shield for mine on the side of a road in a country we had no business being in.

  “You step out clean, my boys here promise to make it fast.” He’d removed his sunglasses, and beneath his left eye sat a splatch of red, misshapen and obviously a birthmark. I make a mental note to remove it slowly once the situation presented itself. “If not, hold tight, we’ll be right down.”

  The concrete pillar I’m taking cover behind, the empty pool in front of me, the collected debris within, it screamed my limitations. They had the high ground, my position less than ideal. And Ray, the part of him I actually saw, it continued to replay in my mind, how it fell toward me, end over end, blood pinwheeling in the sun. Then, as it hits the ground, the sound not new to me, nor how it relented against the concrete, it settles one last time, his lifeless eyes now in line with mine.

  It’s enough. More than.

  And from behind the pillar, I do something I rarely ever have. I fall back. I retreat.

  But I would not mourn. Not yet. Not until Hightower understood me for who I was. Not until I did what I had to.

  I would take this man apart.

  “He’s gone?”

  “He’s gone.” Jeramiah tries to put on a brave face. He attempts to stand tall. I want to admit to doing these same things as well, but I couldn’t. Not as I wanted. Too many years between Ray and I. Too much blood. The man my oldest friend and from
a war neither of us should have been a part of.

  But Jeramiah and I, despite this, we knew the road ahead remained, and Ray being taken from what we were or not, Hightower and what he chose to put people through for a living could not continue.

  From the upstairs portion of the Buchannan house, we begin what we had to: we go to work.

  Was a time I didn’t operate like this, where my methods may have been more headstrong and brash. With time, however, comes wisdom, and with wisdom, if you’re someone who wishes to rid the world of things that should never be, you realize level heads will always prevail, especially when dealing with pieces of shit whose only goal is their own agenda and fuck anyone who gets in the way.

  If he could speak, I’m sure Randall would disagree with this assessment, but seeing as he was an associate of Hightower’s, his point of view and life had been forfeited long ago, even though he’d never accept the fact.

  “Two questions, Randall. You answer them as you should, you stay whole. You don’t, you come to understand how these instruments and a blowtorch can keep a man alive for days.”

  We’re at the Ronson house, in a basement that has grown and been added to throughout the years. Most of it because of Ray, his vision, and the man’s ability to create, but more because of the desire I had to continue what we’d begun.

  Jeramiah stands back from us, and I hear as he begins to rearrange the tools I’d just talked about. Randall—obese, greasy, and with a handlebar mustache—his eyes follow this, widening in ways I’ve seen before. I take a hammer to his right knee in an attempt at bringing him back to the task at hand. He erupts in the chair he’s bound to, unable to move, unable to scream, but it gets me the man’s undivided attention as I want.

  “Last time I ask, big man. You ready?”

  He was.

  But Hightower proves smarter than I hoped and seemed to be anticipating my playbook, which, if I looked at things from his angle and, being him, had acquired the knowledge about me that he had, it wasn’t as implausible an outcome as one would think.

  What he couldn’t anticipate was a man who continued to work from beyond the grave.

  All we needed was for one little event to occur, and considering the number of men Jeramiah had gone through these last couple of weeks, I expected a call soon enough.

  Speak of the devil.

  “Go,” I tell Jeramiah, and as he bolts up the stairs, I answer on the fifth ring.

  “You’ve been busy, Bishop. I can’t deny you that.” I picture his face, that birthmark, his tight blond hair.

  “My schedule was wide open, Hightower. Always is for assholes like you.”

  “Bishop. You sound as though you think you hold all the cards. Men like this, men like you, you get sloppy because of this.” I almost say I could say the same, but I don’t, and give him all the time he requires to hang himself.

  “We aren’t the same, I know that, but I’ve only been trying to protect my business. Much the same way you’ve been trying to protect that memory of your sister. Opposites, but no less important to their intended parties.” He’s trying, I give him that, but mentioning April as he does, all it accomplished was to bring forward what was already there—my mother, Batista retiring, and finally, because of the man on the other end of the line himself, Ray.

  “Importance is far from what a man in your position should be thinking about, Neal.”

  “And I suppose the big bad Bishop Rider has something in mind to correct this?” His tone changes for the first time, more indignant than it has any right to be but right in line with the type of dirtbag he’d chosen to be.

  “See you soon, shitbird.” I hear him attempt to respond, but I was done. Jeramiah and how he’d been signaling me from the top of the stairs telling me everything I needed to know.

  Hightower, in theory at least, now one step closer to an end he not only set in motion, but one he’d never see coming.

  “Each end has to remain open for it to work. I won’t be able to triangulate your position otherwise.” Ray. One last time. The tech he’d installed into each of our phones, an addition he implemented long ago, upgraded to every new burner we came to need thereafter.

  It’s this contingency plan that gets us to within spitting distance of Hightower before he’s even aware he’d revealed himself.

  “We don’t kill him,” I tell Jeramiah. “Not if we can help it.”

  Earlier, we’d followed him from his place in Boyle Heights to a Burger King off the 1-5. Drive-thru breakfast claimed, we turn around, letting him continue with his day as the two of us head back to Boyle Heights. Once there, Jeramiah disables the security system and comes to realize, even though a sign on the front lawn proclaimed as much, there wasn’t a dog to be aware of.

  Five hours later, it begins: Hightower returns, enters his kitchen, and turns to see me. And in that moment of recognition, as I rise from that kitchen chair, it all comes together, his fight-or-flight instinct kicking in faster than the man can turn. What I don’t see, of course, is the look of surprise on his face as Jeramiah plunges the syringe into his neck. He begins to crumble, attempts to speak, but only half succeeds at stopping himself from going all the way to the floor.

  Jeramiah, as he’s wont to do, introduces Hightower’s face to his knee for his trouble.

  One quiet van ride later, we’re back where we needed to be, at the Ronson place, and Hightower is strapped to a table, the full-length mirror I’d become partial to uncovered and in front of him.

  “Two days is the longest anyone has lasted upon this table, Neal. Believe me when I say we’re going to surpass that.” And we do, inches at a time, and as summer gives way to fall, I’ve reduced him by half. It changes him too; the man’s go-to when awake coming to border on delirious. But every once in a while, some of the old Hightower surfaces. Best I can, I re-explain and state what I had since he’d become a torso and not much more: we were still far from done. And that after our first exchange all those months ago, he should’ve just tossed Ray’s phone.

  It takes. It registers. And better men than me, they may have shown mercy here. Looked upon those IV stands, the catheter and colostomy bag, the bedsores, the cold sores, and the place that used to be the man’s nose, saying what normal men might, that enough was enough, the price had been paid.

  But it wasn’t enough. And never would be. Not for men like Hightower. Men who chose to hold themselves above and step upon any of the necks that kept them there. But what we’ve done, what we do, it needed to continue, Ray still here with us or not. I say this as fact, each of us knowing the stakes going in. That we remained as whole as we had for as long as we did, it speaks not only of resiliency and resolve, but of loyalty and truth. And even though we could no longer carry on as we had, carry on we would. Doing so by continuing to do what we had come to do best.

  For my sister. My mother.

  Time to go to work.

  Back to TOC

  CODA

  What? You thought we were done? Fuck no. But are you guys comfortable? That’s the question. These new chairs, they’re always tricky, you know? But the wheels on these bad boys, I can’t say why, but they make me smile. Kid at heart, maybe? Maybe, I dunno.

  Anyway, time to continue.

  You boys fucked up is what you did. Or backed the wrong horse if we really stop to break things down.

  Oh, it wasn’t your idea? That’s what you’re attempting to convey? Lucas, I’ll tell you straight, whatever you’re sellin’, I ain’t buyin’. And by the look of Anton beside you here, him being there with you when all this went down no less, I do believe you’re being thrown under the bus.

  Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe you were being held against your will and participation became something you couldn’t escape from. Is that it? You and your homie here forced to stand idly by as your boss removed another man’s head?

  I’d say yeah, but no, try again, my man.

  Try a-fucking-gain.r />
  So, Neal Hightower. What do you say we discuss him? Yeah, I think we’ll do that. Man was a real entrepreneur in the circle you guys come from, I hear. A real up-and-comer and far from the type of upstanding citizen who would choose to force any person against their will to engage in sex and charge the outcome at a profit. Not a fine upstanding citizen like Neal Hightower.

  What, you think my sarcasm needs work?

  Lucas, as Anton would tell you if he still had a tongue, I ain’t in this for the applause.

  S’okay. You and understanding will get to fucking each other soon enough.

  Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. Hightower. A man who took what Reggie Carbone set in motion and runs with it. Wait, you two don’t know about Reggie either? How do you think Hightower learned about Rider, then? One person more and you have Ray, him being the man your boss relieves of his head.

  You need me to back up? Fine. But guys, seriously, this ain’t rocket science. Try and keep the fuck up.

  Bishop Rider, this basement included, this is who it all begins with. His family is killed by a man named Marcel Abrum, and when this goes down, it changes the man, unleashing much of what this room you’re within represents. Bishop dispatching assholes just like you until he finds Abrum and makes it so a wheelbarrow of all things becomes the man’s second-to-last resting place. He finds himself some help, of course, and really, who wouldn’t in this line of work? But fellas, these men, just so you know---they are a step above.

  Guy one is Ray. A builder of sorts, he was the man whose body you left in that Red Roof Inn. Oh yes, boys, I have seen the aftermath. Got myself a big old fucking eyeful. I also cleaned up after the event. Didn’t know that, did you? I even grabbed that machete you left behind. You know what I do then? I bring everything back here.