The Death of Israel Leventhal

by Boom Baumgartner

  "I'm sorry to inform you of this, but he suffered several gunshot wounds to the head. The majority of his face… well, there is no way to put this delicately, sir… It isn't there."

  George swallowed, trying to keep his mind off his prolific library of memories that would tell him exactly what that face would look like. He had blown off enough heads of corpses to know.

  "It matches what we have of his remains, sir. I'm sorry, but we're fairly certain it's Mr. Mccauley."

  "Right. Tell me where he is." George snatched a dirty napkin from under Aodhan's elbow, and made a motion to him that he needed a pen. He wrote down the address, and hung up.

  Then, he pulled his wallet out, threw down some cash, and rushed out of the bar.

  "Georgie! What the hell?" Aodhan called out from behind him.

  George stepped out off the pavement, and hailed a taxi. It ignored him, so he moved further out in the road, searching for another cab.

  Aodhan ran after him. "Oi! You left three hundred dollars for an eight dollar bill. What's goin' on?"

  George ignored him, glancing up and down the road as he urgently hailed an older taxi with a green roof that finally slowed down.

  Aodhan grabbed his elbow. "George, what is going on?"

  George jerked out of his grip, got into the car, and looked up at Aodhan, his expression serious.

  "Is it Charles?" Aodhan asked.

  George had no answers. Just fear.

  "I'll call you later," he said finally, and shut the door. Then he leaned forward to talk to the cab driver. "JFK, quick as you can, like."

  Chapter Five

  When George smoked his first cigarette, he hated it. He hated the burn in his lungs, and the foul taste in his mouth, but most of all, he hated that the other kids laughed at him when he coughed. But he had finished it.

  And then he asked for another.

  George still smoked cigarettes. The kids from his school were a distant memory, so there was nothing to prove. All it did anymore was stain his teeth yellow and give him a persistent cough.

  "When I find your corpse, Rose, I won't need to ask how you died," Izzy had remarked once, not bothering to look at him.

  "Old age, naturally. With a beautiful woman astride my cock, too rapt by Earthly pleasures to notice my passing."

  "Lung cancer, more like," Izzy scoffed.

  "Don't let that stop you from talking to me anyway. I'm sure, even upon my death, I'd be an interesting conversation partner."

  Izzy shrugged. "As long we agree you'll go first."

  Between them, in the silence, laid the words they both knew, but didn't say; that they'd die of a bullet between their eyes long before anything else happened to them, that someone would find their body, and tear it limb from limb because nowadays dead men tell tales, but mangled corpses have a lot harder time stringing words together.

  Ashes. Well, those don't speak at all.

  And of course, there was Izzy. His body was lying on a cold metal slab in the bowels of the morgue, and it was telling no tales.

  But George could not see his body, or even try to find it in the void. Instead, they sat him down a waiting room with dirty beige floors, and stiff seats covered in worn, blue upholstery.

  A woman in a decade old maroon pantsuit came in, holding a clipboard and reaching out with one hand. "Mr. Darling?"

  George looked up at her, nodded, but did not rise to take her hand. He shook it sitting down.

  "My name is Treva Bolder," she said, sitting down next to George. "I'm a grief counselor, and I will be helping you through the identification process."

  When George did not answer, she continued. "I'll be showing you a photo of the body in a moment. You can take all the time you need before looking at it. But first, I have to ask you a few questions. If you don't want to answer, you don't have to."

  Stiffly, George nodded. The compassion in her voice annoyed him. She didn't know him. She didn't know Izzy. How could she possibly know enough to feel sympathy?

  After a moment a silence, she asked. "Did Mr. McCauley have any tattoos?"

  "No," he responded flatly.

  "What color was his hair?"

  "Dark brown. Curly."

  "Skin color?"

  "Dark. Not black, but dark. He was half Turkish."

  "Okay. Thank you." She made a few notes, and then set them aside. "So, what you'll see, Mr. Darling, is a picture of his face on a blue sheet. I have to warn you, he suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his cranium. It's okay if you do not recognize him. Don't feel hurried to look at the photos if you're not ready."

  Treva handed the clipboard over to him with the photo clipped in face down. George took it, and immediately flipped over the photo.

  Izzy's body only told one tale, and it was that somebody had killed him. The front half of his skull was obliterated. It looked like a flower wilting in the florescent light of the photo; the explosion of flesh frozen in time where the bullets had entered the back of his skull and blasted through his face. Wordlessly, George handed the clipboard back to Treva, and then fished in his pockets to find his cigarettes.

  Putting one in his mouth, he searched for a lighter. After all, why not? Izzy wasn't there to complain about it.

  "I'm so sorry, Mr. Darling." Treva's voice was still sweet, and calm, and it took everything he had not to bridle at it. "You can't smoke in here."

  Shaking his head, George pulled the cigarette from his mouth and held on to it.

  "Is that Mr. McCauley?"

  George eyed his cigarette, and licked his bottom lip. "Yeah, it is."

  "I'm sorry for your loss," said Treva, placing her hand on his shoulder.

  "Me, too," murmured George. He stared at the floor for a minute, his thoughts focusing on one thing: killing the motherfucker who did this. Abruptly, he stood up and walked out the door.

  "Mr. Darling!" Treva called out, but he ignored her. Whatever else she said, it melted into the blur of hospital hallways that smelled of disinfectant and pestilence as he left the building.

  The world moved in slow motion, like there was a way time worked previously, and the way time worked now. Before, it was like lying on one's back on lazy river. Now, it was like wading through the unfathomable depths of the ocean, the currents pushing him back and forth in unpredictable ways.

  He was staring into the void, opening himself up to let it stare back. Or rather, just one part of it. Wherever the last vestiges of Izzy were he invited in, but he could not find him.

  When the sliding doors opened, and he stepped out into heat of the DC summer, he was unable to feel it. He lit the cigarette he had been holding in his hand. He sucked it in, trying to savor the feeling of the burn, but the numbness had taken hold of every part of him. Then, he crumpled the box in his pocket and tossed it carelessly on the street.

  Someone was going to die for this. He just had to figure out who.

  *~*~*

  Derek's body convulsed to the floor with Israel's expertly aimed shot. A stinging sensation raced across his arm, but Israel ignored it as he strode forward, jumping the desk and pinning a weak Derek to the ground.

  Blood burbled through Derek's teeth as Israel kicked the gun away from his hand. Then he searched the room for something to suffocate the man with, and spotted a cushion on one of the arm chairs.

  There would be no waiting for Derek to die, even if he deserved a slow death.

  Before Israel could shove the orange pillow to his face, Derek had stopped breathing. Carelessly, he tossed the pillow back toward the chair, and sat down the desk. He welcomed the cold slide of the void as he looked down at Derek like a lord surveying his domain.

  Slowly, Derek's eyes roved around the room. His hand moved up to his mouth, touching his bloodied lip and examining it.

  "The fuck?" he gurgled.

  Israel leaned forward, his eyes locking on Derek's. He said nothing.

  "Are you? Is this?" Derek choked. "Am I dead?"

  "Yeah," Israel half-whispered.<
br />
  "You killed me."

  Israel stood up and adjusted his shirt. "I did." Then he squatted down next to Derek's face. "Now let's get started. Give me names."

  "What names?" Derek turned his face away.

  Israel inched closer. "Names of the people after me. I know it's not just you. You couldn't do this alone."

  "Fuck you. I don't know what you're talking about."

  Israel flicked his hair out of his face, and brought his lips just shy of Derek's ear. "I don't usually delight in doing this, but you're a special case."

  Israel leaned back and pulled at the void, sweating as he did so. These kind of things were always easier with Rose, and Israel inwardly berated himself for depending on that support. He had worked alone before. He could do it again.

  Derek gurgled, his eyes searching a darkness that Israel could not see. Israel let his thoughts trail to Nietzsche, letting them shape the terror of the void. Israel usually preferred more sensible philosophers, like Kant and DesCartes. But Rose… Rose liked post-modernist assholes because it reflected the own mess of his mind. It was probably because he spent too long in the void. Israel would be damned if it didn't work. It always did.

  "You know, Derek," Israel drawled, bringing hand up to examine his dirty nails. "They say if you stare into the abyss for too long…"

  Derek began to scream at something Israel could not perceive.

  "The abyss will stare right back into you." Israel worked dry blood out of the crevice of his thumbnail.

  Derek continued to scream, and Israel let him.

  "This," Israel continued, "is death. As long as I keep you here, you will experience it over and over and over again. And I will until you tell me what I need to know."

  "Stop, stop, stop!" Derek yelled.

  Israel pushed at the void, the reality of the room settling back around them. "Talk."

  Derek gasped. "About what?"

  Israel pulled at the void again.

  "No!" Derek screamed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Who wanted me dead?"

  "I did."

  Israel frowned. "I don't understand."

  "I couldn't trust you after Chicago. You didn't give me a name, which means you had all of that information."

  "I told you we were interrupted. I didn't get information."

  "Bullshit. You had it, and knew it was more valuable than what I was paying you. You were going to blackmail me with it, too."

  "If you thought that, why hire me again? Why not just put out a hit?"

  "I tried. No one could find you. Hiring you for a job was the best way I had to lure you out."

  "So, the Amanda thing was a lie?"

  Derek cackled. "Not totally. I wanted to know whose kid it was. But I knew how she killed herself because it wasn't me. She'd have done anything to get away, that fucking bitch. Even blackmail me."

  "This doesn't make sense. Someone is after me because of the Chicago job." Israel touched the bruise over his right eye.

  "Yeah. Me."

  Israel shook his head. None of this added up. "No. We were interrupted. That would mean you sent men to kill us while we interrogated the corpse you paid us to find." Blood dripped down his arm, but he could not feel it. He could not tell if it was real. It was hard to in the void.

  "No."

  Israel narrowed his eyes, concentrating on Derek's words as the blood disappeared from his hand. "Did you send the woman who jumped me in Milwaukee?"

  "No."

  "The name Woodmansey means nothing to you."

  Derek paused and bit his lip.

  "What?"

  "That name… Woodmansey... it was in Amanda's phone. I think it was the next man she cheated on me with."

  "Where's her phone?"

  "It doesn't matter. The number didn't connect."

  "Where is the phone?" Israel repeated, keeping his voice low and menacing.

  "I tossed it when it wasn't any use."

  Israel pulled back the edges of the void again, letting Derek scream as he withdrew himself altogether.

  At his feet, Derek's body was still, his eyes wide and his mouth open the way it had been before Israel entered the void. He resisted the urge to spit on the man before he left.

  *~*~*

  George tried to work a timeline in his head, filling in his gaps with assumptions and guesses. In the last week, Izzy had dug up Amanda Long and then gone radio silent. Unanswered texts in Elizabeth, New Jersey, meant that something had happened between the estimated time of death from the coroner and then.

  What did George know? He knew that a month and half ago, he and Izzy had botched a simple smash and grab job for Derek Long. He knew that while he convalesced, Izzy came back with a black eye and asked him to do another job. He knew that was also connected to Derek Long.

  He also knew that Long lived in DC.

  But that didn't make sense. Izzy would never meet someone at their own home. It was always on neutral turf that he knew inside and out. It was always with a way out. If Izzy felt unsafe, he didn't show. If Izzy felt insecure, he got the money other ways even if it meant taking it directly from the bank account if he had gone spare.

  The first thing George found when he googled Derek Long's name was an article about the businessman's disappearance on page two of the list results. Two days ago, he had not shown up to work, answered emails, or took phone calls. No one got nastily written memos, or had to worry about sexual harassment. At least, in his office anyway.

  Apparently, this was unusual, as Derek made it his business to be in everyone else's. The police were asking for any info about his whereabouts.

  He had either run because of the price-fixing scandal, or because he murdered Israel Leventhal.

  Or, he was dead.

  There was only one thing to do, George thought. Call Jaime LaFleur, Izzy's fixer and middleman.

  Jaime LaFleur was a fixer who lived right outside of New Orleans in a two-hundred year-old house that she said was so haunted she could still hear their voices. George never believed her, nor did he want to. It seemed mad to want to speak to the dead all the time. There was a reason George only bought flats in new complexes, all of which were as far from cemeteries as possible. Even though he could control his ability, there was always going to be a time when his walls between him and the void would collapse.

  They could be crumbling right now.

  Gravediggers had their own myths about the void. Some true, others not. There were tales that had been passed down between generations of gravediggers when gravediggers used to live long enough to go crazy from the void. Nowadays, it was too easy to lend your skills to the mob and end up dead yourself, so few lived long enough to know.

  But before, they would say that men who spent too much time talking to the dead would die before their body did. They would see phantoms, and see things that others would swear were never there. But that was the nature of the void. It was chaos, and what was nonexistent for a human, was every world for a gravedigger.

  Jaime's family was living proof of that. She said her mother still talked to her, even thirty years later after her death, though George didn't believe it. She came from a long line of gravediggers who used their skills to conduct séances; it was how she got into the business of being a fixer.

  Now she heard voices from everywhere, not just the dead, and she connected them. That was how she knew George. That was how she knew Izzy.

  "I was just about to call you, Rose," came her soft, southern accent. "Have you seen Leventhal?"

  "Yes."

  A soft sigh ghosted the other line. "So Charles Hastings was just fucking with me."

  George felt cold at the mention of the name, and he rubbed his cheek, trying to brush off the gravel that wasn't there. "What do you mean?"

  "The asshole claimed he could blackmail me. Said his information came from Leventhal's corpse."

  A pulsing pain beat across his right eye. "Where is Hastings now?"

  "Miam
i."

  "That job is mine," he informed her coldly.

  "I figured. Get a burner and text me. I'll give you the address."

  The John Doe Job

  Two Years Earlier

  Things that were supposed to be easy were never easy, and things that were supposed to be hard always were. That was why a job that should have been as simple as finding out names and moving turned into a nightmare. Quite literally, in fact.

  George Rose was supposed to make it easier for Leventhal. No one slipped in and out of the void easier than he did, and they had to be fast. The cop that had hired them could only guarantee a thirty-minute window in the morgue, alone and unmonitored.

  "Funny, this," Rose commented. "You'd think having a cop hire us to find out names of John Does would be legal."

  "Our job doesn't exist. How would you even expense that out, Rose?"

  "Consultation?"

  Israel shook, his head. "You know it doesn't work like that."

  "It's a shame it doesn't. Make it easier to retire."

  Rose's lab coat looked crisp and clean against his dark skin as he leaned against the building. He took out a cigarette from his breast pocket.

  Israel glowered at him. "You'll blow our cover."

  "Hm?" Rose took a quick puff, letting a cloud escape the right corner of his lips.

  "You work at a morgue—you would know what smoking does to you."

  "But I don't work at a morgue."

  "Ostensibly, you do. You look the part, so play it."

  Rose chuckled. "Hate to break it to ya, but doctors do not do what they say, mate. I slept with one, and he tried to not use a rubber. I shit you not. He was a gyno, even."

  Israel rolled his eyes. The light above them in the alleyway flickered twice. "That's the signal."

  Rose nodded, and threw the cigarette to the ground.

  Israel frowned as Rose rubbed it into the asphalt with the clean white tip of his Oxford. "You're leaving evidence," he grumbled, opening the door for Rose to walk through.

  Ducking through the entrance, Rose shrugged. "I hardly think that they will be pulling out the stops to do DNA testing for this."

  "He said the bodies—"

  "Yeah, yeah. I know what he said. I'll start on the left, you on the right. We'll make a race of it."