The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  “Didn’t want you changing your mind and deciding to kill me instead.”

  Cyris says nothing as he thinks about it. So I say nothing. A minute goes by in which it seems we’re setting a trend.

  “You got the money?” he asks.

  “I got it.”

  “Fifty grand.”

  “What?”

  “You’re pissing me off, buddy. It’s fifty grand now. It’s not free to dial a cell phone.”

  No, but it doesn’t cost ten thousand dollars either. “I only have forty.”

  “Forty will only get you eighty percent of her, and I decide which eighty.”

  At least he’s sharpening up. “Fine,” I finally say. “Fifty grand.” This isn’t going to come down to money. It’s going to come down to me killing him.

  “Meet me back out at the cabin.”

  “No way.”

  “What?”

  “We three go out there and only you come back. Tell me if I’m wrong. It has to be somewhere more public.” I’ve been giving it some thought. “The pier. New Brighton.”

  It seems like a good location. Not too many people, but enough so Cyris won’t try anything. He says nothing as he thinks this through. Jo could already be dead and he just wants the money. Or she could be alive and he’s thinking about the location, about how he has to change his plans. He’s thinking that maybe he won’t be getting the chance to kill us tomorrow night after all. So he’s still saying nothing. But now he’s realizing he knows my address, my details. He’s figuring he can kill me later on. In his own time. At his own leisure. He can afford to drive on over one night after mowing his lawn, rip me apart, and pick up dinner on the way back. So the idea of a public place isn’t looking too bad. In a public place I can’t try anything against him. In a public place we all walk away alive.

  “Midnight,” he says.

  Only he’s wrong. I’m happy to try something in a public place. I have more to lose than him. Everything to gain.

  “Ten o’clock,” I counter. “More people.”

  I wince as I wait for a reply or for the phone to hang up.

  “Don’t forget the money, asshole. I’ll cut her pretty little head off no matter how many people are around.”

  “Let me talk to Jo.”

  “She’s busy.”

  “I need to know she’s okay.”

  “She’s okay, asshole.”

  “I need proof of life,” I say, which is something I’ve heard people say in movies and documentaries.

  “I’m going to give you proof of death instead, partner,” he says, and with that he hangs up.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Agitated. He knows he’s agitated, and the phone call hasn’t helped. His stomach hurts, but so does his head and he wants to lash out, wants to strike out at everything and anything. He grips his stomach and wonders why he ever threw away those painkillers. He contemplates smashing the phone against the edge of the desk, but that would accomplish nothing.

  At least he sure as shit feels better today than he did yesterday.

  The last few days have been hell. He was taught in the army that there would be days like this. Weeks. Months. He never saw combat, but he was trained for it. He knew how to kill people. His wife knew how to kill people too. It’s where he met her. They trained together. They socialized. They fell in love. That was ten years ago. Then five years ago they got married. Then four and a half years ago there was a training accident and now his wife is a former shell of the person she used to be. It was a helicopter accident. The thing about helicopters is that at the best of times they fly, and at any other time they don’t. They’re not like planes. Planes can get into trouble and they can glide. Planes have a chance of landing. They can stay level enough to jump out of with a chute. Helicopters don’t glide. They fall. They crash. The pilot was killed. Two corporals were killed. Macy, his wife, ended up losing both of her legs, her left one just above the knee, her right one just below.

  So she was given a medical discharge. It was going to be a new life. She went through multiple surgeries. She spent weeks where she would just cry. It was three months until he could bring her home. Things got better. They got worse. They got better again. She got counseling. She was going great. Then she tried to kill herself. He had gone to work. She tied a rope around a beam in the garage and tied the other end around her neck. She got out of her wheelchair and sat herself up on a workbench. Then she jumped. The wheelchair fell over. Then Cyris came home. He’d forgotten his sunglasses. He found her in the garage. Her jaw had clamped. She’d bitten off a chunk of her tongue and blood was running down her neck. He cut her down. He called an ambulance. He got her jaw open, but her mouth kept filling with blood from her severed tongue. He tried to resuscitate her, but there was too much blood. The ambulance arrived. They were lucky-there had been a false call two blocks away so there was an ambulance at his house within ninety seconds of him calling. The paramedics took over.

  Everybody thought she was going to die. The doctors guessed she must have been hanging between two and three minutes. Her brain had been starved of oxygen. They resuscitated her, but there was brain damage. She would never be functional. That was the word the doctor used. Functional. Like she was the remote control to his TV. There were payments from the army to help with her rehabilitation from her severed legs, but there was nothing extra for the brain damage. Insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. She had tried to kill herself. They weren’t in the business of helping people who had tried to die. She needed full-time care. The army helped for four years because of her legs, then a year ago they stopped paying. It was cutbacks. Everywhere had cutbacks. The economy was in the toilet.

  He walks through to his wife. She’s lying in bed watching the TV. She likes cartoons. She’s seen this particular one well over a thousand times. It’s on a DVD and it’s on repeat and he knows every word, every sound effect, and at night he leaves the TV running for her and the volume off. She looks up at him and smiles. “Side Russ,” she says. That’s his name now, thanks to about a quarter of her tongue hitting the garage floor.

  “Hey, babe,” he says. Sometimes, when he’s feeling at his worst, he likes to tell her.

  “I’m hungry,” she says.

  “I’ll get you something in a minute,” he says, knowing that if he doesn’t, she’ll forget that she’s hungry anyway.

  “Ooo have a beard,” she says.

  He reaches up and tugs on his beard. He’s had it for a few weeks now, and he hates it. When this is all over he’ll shave it off.

  “Side Russ,” she says. “Are thoo okay?”

  “My stomach hurts,” he tells her. “I was stabbed.” He lifts up his T-shirt and shows her his stomach. There’s duct tape holding the wound closed.

  “What ha-hend?”

  “A bad man stabbed me,” he says, and then he tells her about it.

  She starts to cry. And then she gets distracted by the cartoon on the TV. Then she starts to laugh. And then she looks over at him. “Side Russ,” she says. “Are thoo okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he tells her. “Let me get you something to eat.”

  He goes through to the bathroom. He soaks his hands in water, then raises them to his face. He wipes at it, wipes and wipes and his skin is sore, yeah, and he’s careful to avoid his broken nose. It’s swollen and raw and there’s bruising around it. Then he wipes those same hands at the mirror. The image remains and he can’t get rid of the pain. From nowhere one of the headaches strikes, and he has to lower himself and sit on the edge of the bath. Christ. When it passes he opens the medicine cabinet, but nothing lives in there except aspirin, so he grabs hold of a few, even though they will do little to help. Clenching his fists, he sits back on the side of the bath and lifts his shirt. He’s going to need to get some more stuff from his buddy, Derek, the guy that fixed him up years ago with the good shit. His buddy is the same guy that fixed him up with this gig. Derek is one of those guys who knows people. He’s one of those guys w
ho introduces people to people who need things done. He’s also Macy’s brother. Derek has hooked him up with other people in the past. Others that needed to die. Not many. Just a few. He’s not proud of what he does, but he needs the money. He needs it to look after Macy.

  The duct tape across his stomach is covered in dried blood. He chews the aspirin and the taste makes his head spin, but at least he’s focused now on the job at hand, and from his back pocket he takes out the piece of paper with his instructions, with his goals, and the piece of paper helps to remind him that tonight he’s going to be a wealthy man. A wealthy man. Oh yeah.

  He tugs at the edge of the duct tape, but it’s fastened down, and he wishes he had put some padding beneath it first because now the wound will smile open when he pulls the tape away. He squeezes his hands across his ears. Never in his life has he suffered from headaches, not until Monday. Feldman will have to pay. He’s going to pay in more ways than one.

  Cyris pushes himself up from the bath and moves down the hallway. He wonders how Macy would react if he were to take her into the basement and show her his investment. He wonders how both women would react. Of course Macy would forget all about it after a little while. He reaches the doorway to the basement. He’s light-headed and the walls and the door are spinning in time with his mind, but in the opposite direction. He reaches out and balances himself. The room starts to spin faster. He holds his breath and the need to vomit slowly fades.

  He thinks of Charlie. He thinks of Charlie plunging the knife into him, and at the same time the pain in his stomach flares up as though the knife is back in there, twisting around and around. He doubles over and collapses to his knees. No amount of money is worth this. When he gets back to his feet he unlocks the basement door and heads downstairs. The woman looks up at him and he can see she’s been crying. He hates it when women cry. It’s their way of making men feel guilty. It’s a weapon they use to make men feel like crap. Macy never did that to him. Macy was an army chick. She was tough.

  He hates Charlie Feldman for being such an asshole.

  He hates the world for being the way it is.

  From the bench nearby he picks up a knife and moves toward Feldman’s wife.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I stare at the phone, looking to take back the words I just said to Cyris, wanting to reach through the dead air and pull them back, but they’re no longer mine, they’re his, and he’s going to do with them what he wants to. That’s the thing about Cyris. He’s all about setting the rules.

  The car windows are slightly fogged over from my heavy breathing. It feels like fifty degrees in here and the air tastes stale. I wipe a hand over the glass, smudging a path through the moisture and creating a gateway to the outside. Kathy and Luciana are standing only a few yards from my door. I stare at them, waiting for Jo to appear, but she doesn’t, and perhaps she won’t until I know for a fact that my words have killed her.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, hold them closed for a few seconds to give the two girls a chance to disappear, and when I open them back up and see them still there I start to doubt that they’re only in my mind. They look happier since I saw them last, as if somehow at peace. My skin tingles as my arms break out in goose bumps. A cold chill blasts its way down the back of my neck as if the air-conditioning in the Holden has just been cranked to some mystery arctic setting. I try to open the door, but my arms won’t move. I can barely breathe. The world sways and I can hardly stay conscious.

  Kathy is wearing a long, white dress, shoulderless, the material thin and whispery. Luciana is wearing a summer dress covered in small, red roses and yellow daffodils. She’s wearing a hat too. She looks tanned. None of these clothes I saw them wearing, so why would I see them dressed like this now? They’re holding hands as they stand there smiling at me. I get my arms moving jerkily and manage to roll down the window. Their mouths open and close, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Kathy takes a step forward. Her hair is blowing in some invisible breeze. Luciana follows. My eyes are starting to sting, but I’m too frightened to blink, too frightened that in that split second they will disappear. Something is going on here that can’t be controlled by either my imagination or my conscience.

  That’s when Jo appears. She fades into view, like somebody sneaking out of the shadows. She’s wearing the same dress she wore on our first date. She offers a sad smile, the kind of sympathetic smile you have when you’ve just found out one of your friends has been hurt by bad news.

  “Jo,” I say, and seeing her is confirmation that I fucked up, that my words have killed her.

  “It’s okay, Charlie,” she says.

  I tell her I’m sorry. I try the door handle and just then the phone rings. I glance at it. In that instant Kathy is gone, Luciana has gone with her, they’ve taken Jo, and I’m alone in my car looking back at an empty street. My window is still rolled up, the smear mark on the glass from my hand is still clear. My face is covered in a film of sweat and the lump on my forehead is throbbing. As I scramble for the phone it slips in my fingers and bounces off the passenger seat onto the floor. I reach down, grab it, and open it while I’m still hunched over the gearshift.

  “Cyris?”

  “Charlie, it’s me.”

  “Jo!” I say, and hearing her voice serves not only to make me feel relieved she is still alive, but also proves the ghosts are not ghosts at all.

  “I’m okay, Charlie.”

  Thank God. Thank you, God. “Has he hurt you?”

  “I’m okay. He wants me to tell you he’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “I know.”

  “He says don’t try anything, Charlie.”

  “I won’t.”

  “He’ll let us go.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  She hesitates, and then, “I have to go. Be careful, Charlie. Promise me that.”

  “Jo,” I say, but I’m already talking into a broken connection.

  Jo is alive and so is my hope. I will either die in hope or live in despair. I drop the phone onto the seat and get back to the very business I came here to do, which is waiting. Waiting to see what Kathy’s husband does.

  Cyris told me he was busy tonight. I know from experience he’s been busy the last few nights so I’m thinking if there’s a payoff to take place there’s a chance it’s tonight.

  I stare out the window as the minutes pass. The night gets darker. The number of people walking by thins out and then there are none. Lights are turned on as people settle in for the evening. An hour passes. Two hours. I’m starting to need a bathroom. Lights start to turn off. People are going to bed. I have nothing to do but run my theory over and over in my head. The problem is it looks bad. Looks worse every time I glance at my watch and see another block of time has gone by. I was wrong to think the payment would be tonight and the passing minutes prove this to me. Wrong to think the husband is involved.

  Wrong about everything.

  I reach toward the ignition. I’m going to have to pay Cyris and hope for the best. Resort to Plan B, which I’m still working on. I hear a car start before I start my own. I let go of the keys and lean forward. Could this be it? I wait and watch as the Mercedes reverses down the driveway and onto the street. Frank. Frank the cheating husband. The car straightens and heads away from me.

  I start the Holden and begin following. I don’t turn my headlights on. When he turns the corner I keep fifty yards behind him. The full moon and streetlights provide more than enough light to drive by, turning the roads pale blue except for the road markings, which glow white. Stars twinkle in the sky, their light coming from millions of miles away and centuries ago. I wonder if people like Cyris lived on those long-lost worlds. A few people coming toward me flash their lights, but Frank the cheating husband can’t see that, not from fifty yards ahead. Before I take the next corner, I turn on my lights.

  The theory I’ve been playing with is once again starting to look good. I wonder how much money exchanged hands to end t
wo women’s lives. In a fair world I should be getting a cut of those funds. Was money the motive? I’ve seen Frank’s house. I’ve seen his car. He was cheating on his wife. He wanted a divorce and didn’t want to give her half of everything. Instead he took everything she ever had.

  Of course this is all guesswork. He could just be heading out for a hamburger.

  We turn right at a set of lights and my fear that he’s meeting Cyris outside the city is quashed when Frank’s brake lights come on and he signals before pulling into a dead-end side street next to a shopping mall. I continue ahead and park on the road opposite. I kill the engine and pull up the hand brake. I pull the lens caps off the binoculars and watch him eight times bigger than normal life as he pulls into the entrance to the parking lot to his left. He pulls into it and kills his lights, but keeps on driving, making it difficult to follow him through my narrow field of vision. He turns right, goes straight for a bit, then turns left and out of sight. I pull the binoculars away and tuck them back into my pocket. I know this mall: he can’t have gone far.

  The dashboard clock reads eleven fifty. If Frank is making a payoff it makes sense it’s going to happen at midnight. That gives me ten minutes to wait. Ten minutes to consider where things can go wrong. Ten minutes to figure what I can do about it.

  I suck in a deep breath and, checking there’s no other traffic, I leave my car and run across the road. Spur-of-the-moment decisions haven’t been working out for me well this week, but I figure one has to go right. It’s like continually doubling down on red at the roulette table, chasing your losses and knowing it can’t keep on coming up black. Statistically it’s impossible that you can roll the wheel for the next fifty years and never get it to go your way.

  Only at the end of the day the house always wins.

  I vault the low railing that separates the parking lot from the sidewalk and land without the embarrassment of tripping. I break into a jog. Like town this afternoon, there are diggers and cranes and other building equipment lying around. Skeletons of more parking lots and more shops to come look like macabre playground equipment. Mounds of shingle and dirt form small hills. It takes me half a minute to reach the turn where the car disappeared. I crouch down and peer around the corner. I can see Frank’s car but no Frank. The car has its headlights facing me, but they’re not on. I keep watching and a few moments later Frank appears from behind his car. He climbs into his seat, pulls the door shut and, keeping the lights off, begins rolling forward. With nowhere to run I lie flat against the ground and watch the car arc around at least fifteen yards away from me so I’m out of sight. My army fatigues do what they’re designed for, and he doesn’t see me. He passes and accelerates away. The headlights flick on. He leaves the parking lot and pulls out onto the street.