Old Habits

by ChristopherWaltz

Six days passed, and not one word escaped Gabe’s lips. He was a silent creature, sure, but as far as I knew, he had never gone this long without talking. Day in and day out, he sat in his room, usually in an armchair, staring out the wall of windows lining the east wall of our apartment building.

  It was no secret he was contemplating just when and how we were to kill Harrison.

  On days two, three, and five, a nurse had been sent to the apartment, presumably by Harrison himself, but each time Gabe had refused to see her. Each time, she made an attempt, each more meager than the one before, but he sent her away without so much as uttering a syllable. On her last visit, she pulled me aside and stared at me sternly.

  “I’d like to help you out with this, I swear,” I said. “But when Gabe sets his mind to something, he doesn’t back down. And it seems like he has set his mind to not being seen by anyone right now.”

  She shook her head angrily. “I wasn’t told what happened, but your friend looks like he’s in bad shape.” The woman was tall, thin, and in her late forties. She wore her hair in a tight bun on the back of her head and seemed exactly like any stereotypical nurse from the movies. “His hands are in bad shape, and I’m worried about infection setting in. The swelling has gone down in his eyes and cheeks, but he needs antibiotics just to make sure he doesn’t take a turn for the worse.”

  I shrugged and let my jaw slack open, not sure what to say to her.

  “I get it,” she said. “He’s stubborn, but your boss keeps asking me to come back and tend to him. Each time I tell him I couldn’t do my job, the less happy he is.”

  Something about her words made me think she was asking for my help in more ways than one. Yes, she was a nurse who had a job to do, but she was also a nurse hired by Harrison. And from the looks of things, no one hired by Harrison was completely unaware of his power. This nurse knew she wasn’t completely safe, even if she didn’t know why.

  “I’ll try to talk to him, but you said it; he’s stubborn. If he doesn’t want treatment, then he’s not getting treatment. Believe me, I know,” I said, thinking back to the time Gabe practically forced me to sew a stab wound shut for him as opposed to going to the hospital and risk being questioned by the police. However, as much as I hated to admit it, he was much worse for wear this time around.

  The nurse shook her head again and sat a small amber vial of pills on the kitchen counter. “There’s two weeks’ worth of Levofloxacin in there. If you can’t talk him into taking it, try mixing it in with his food. I’m assuming he isn’t well enough to be up making his own meals.”

  I nodded to her, signaling I would do my best to help her out. She picked up her purse from the table next to the front door to the apartment and let herself out, not saying another word to me. She was likely planning what she would tell Harrison after yet another failed attempt at getting Gabe to allow treatment.

  I let a couple of hours pass after the nurse left before approaching Gabe. If there was one thing I had learned since meeting him, it was things had to be done on his terms. If Gabe didn’t want to talk for six days, then Gabe wasn’t going to talk for six days. If Gabe wanted to refuse medical treatment and risk dying of an infection, then by God, he was going to refuse medical treatment and risk dying of an infection.

  I decided to make some soup to take him for lunch, and contemplated mixing one of the antibiotics into the meal before serving it to him, but somehow, I knew Gabe would know. He wasn’t stupid, and I wasn’t stupid enough to try to go behind his back, even if it was for his own good. Instead, I decided to try my own way of doing this, the way I knew Gabe would respond to most, if he was going to respond at all.

  Carrying a fancy metal tray I had found under one of the kitchen counters, I knocked on Gabe’s slightly ajar bedroom door with my foot. He didn’t respond, but his lack of telling me to go away led me to believe it was safe for me to enter his sanctuary.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  No answer.

  I sat the tray on the end table next to the chair Gabe was sitting in. He was dressed in a plain white t-shirt and a pair of black basketball shorts. His face and hair were now clear of all blood, but he still looked fractured. The nurse had been right about the swelling going down in his face, but it still didn’t look like Gabe sitting across from me. The still-busted lips, the yellowing bruises on his face, the fingers wrapped in individual bandages; they all made him look like someone I had never seen before. They made him look violated.

  “The nurse gave these to me,” I said, sitting the vial of antibiotics down on the tray next to the bowl of soup and half sandwich I had made for him. “I know you’re not going to, but she wants you to take two a day, with meals and a full glass of water.”

  No answer.

  I decided not to push my luck with Gabe. He had been through a lot, and if he didn’t want to talk about it, no one was going to be able to force him. I left the food and the medicine on the table next to him and turned to leave the room. As I walked through the doorway, I stopped momentarily, not sure if I should bother saying anything else. Taking a chance, I said, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I didn’t wait for Gabe to answer; I knew he wouldn’t, but at least he knew someone was on his side. Even though we had been through a lot together, I felt like he needed to know I was still there for him.

  Two days later, the nurse had stopped coming by to check on Gabe, and I found myself, at least in the back of my mind, hoping Harrison had simply stopped asking her to come. Part of me worried something else had happened to her. It was hard not to after your roommate had been attacked and tortured by his own brother. However, I had to learn to push things like that out of my mind if I was going to make it through the next indefinite amount of time working for Harrison without driving myself insane. In a world where crime was the only law, I had to accept the fact that some people weren’t going to stick around the entire time. Some people weren’t going to make it out alive.

  As I stood in the kitchen, preparing another meal for Gabe that would inevitably end up not eaten (just like the rest of them), I found myself surprised to see him limp slowly out of his bedroom and around the corner. He looked solemn, not as solemn as he had been for nearly the past week, but solemn enough.

  “What?” he asked, using the countertop for support and popping a mini carrot into his mouth.

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to act normal. “I just wasn’t expecting you to be up and about yet.”

  Gabe laughed. It sounded fake, but it was still a laugh. “I figured I needed to stop moping around and get back to normal. I thought if I hit the one week mark of sitting in my room and staring out a window, I might not stop. Is that lunch for me or for you?”

  “It’s for you. I already ate,” I said.

  “That’s too bad. We’re going out,” Gabe said. He was dressed in normal clothes and had a jacket slung over his arm. It was hiding the bandages on one of his hands, but I wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or not.

  I stopped putting together the sandwich on the plate in front of me and stared at Gabe cautiously. “We’re going out to where?” I asked.

  “It’s a secret,” he answered quietly, bringing his bandaged index finger up to his lips as if to tell me to shush. Even though he was broken and beaten, there was still a little bit of that Gabe Malvado charm and secrecy left in him.

  I wasn’t sure how to react to this information, or lack of information. Just a few hours before, Gabe had been barricaded in his bedroom, and now he was showered, dressed, and ready to take me on some kind of secret outing. One on hand, I thought it might give us an opportunity to talk about things. Gabe had told me we were going to kill Harrison, but nothing had been mentioned about it in the days following the attack. I knew it wasn’t safe to discuss murdering your boss inside the apartment he had provided for you, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to discuss it at all. I was a lot of things, but had still not turned into a mu
rderer.

  “Get your coat,” Gabe instructed, eyes wide.

  “What about…”

  “Don’t ask questions. Follow my lead.”

  I threw my arms into the air, not even bothering to put up a fight. A few seconds later, I had hastily put the lunch into the fridge and was putting on my jacket. Gabe marched towards the door, still limping, but trying to make his injuries seem less painful than I was sure they were.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as Gabe swung the door to the apartment open and jumped back, only slightly startled by the man standing outside, seemingly waiting for one or both of us to try to leave.

  “Yes, where are you going?” Geet asked, folding his arms over his chest and smiling widely at his younger brother.

  Gabe took a breath and swallowed, as if trying to gain his composure. I could only imagine the shock of seeing the person who had savagely beaten you only days before standing in front of you, unexpected.

  “Well?” Geet asked.

  “We’re going out to scout some new clients. I’ve been… a little under the weather and wanted to get a jump on work now that I’m feeling better,” Gabe answered coldly. We all knew the truth about what had happened, but he still decided to play it cool, not giving Geet the satisfaction of telling the real reason he hadn’t been working.

  Geet clicked his tongue inside his mouth as if examining Gabe’s story and firmly planted his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Gabe flinched only slightly, but anyone could see his breathing had gone shallow and his hands were shaking. “I’m glad you’re feeling up to getting back in the saddle, little brother, but are you sure you’re well enough to be running around the city?”

  “I think I know what’s best for me,” Gabe answered.

  Geet nodded his head. “I’m sure you do. Just be careful out there. You don’t look like you’re back to one hundred percent just yet. Whatever put you under the weather must have been pretty powerful. Maybe you should take another couple of days to recoup.”

  Glancing over at Gabe, I could see fire in his eyes. “Let’s go, Jamie,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Geet.

  I followed Gabe down the hallway after he had shoved past Geet and was happy to see the elevator doors open as soon as I hit the call button. As we got on, I glanced down the hallway back towards our apartment; Geet stared back, smiling wider than ever.

  “You can’t let him get under your skin like that,” I said once we were out of the building and getting into one of the cars Harrison had supplied to us, a silver Lexus.

  Gabe scoffed. “Sometimes you have to let Geet think he’s won. Him thinking I’m pissed stopped him from asking more questions.”

  “So you’re not pissed?” I asked.

  “Oh, I am, but I’m usually better at hiding it than I was back there. Geet can’t have any idea we’re not going out to really work today though. Letting him have that small amount of satisfaction got us out of the apartment without too much trouble.”

  I sat silently.

  “You have to know Harrison’s watching every move we make, right?”

  “You really think so?” I asked.

  Gabe didn’t answer, but only stared at me out of the corner of his eyes as we pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street. A few minutes later, we were on the interstate, heading northwest, out of the city. The skyscrapers passed us in a blur as Gabe punched the accelerator, not bothering to abide the speed limit. I was somewhat surprised, however, when Gabe signaled to exit the interstate. I was even more surprised when we pulled the car into a parking spot at the Jefferson Park Transit Center.

  “What are we doing, Gabe? Where are we really going? Are we running again?” I asked, the questions flowing from my mouth like vomit.

  Gabe opened his door and got out of the car, not speaking to me.

  “Gabe!” I shouted, still sitting in the car.

  He leaned down and stared at me, somewhat annoyed.

  “Walk and talk, Jamie. We don’t have a lot of time to work with here. Harrison undoubtedly has tracking systems in all of his cars, so we can’t really drive anywhere without him knowing exactly where we are,” he said.

  I did as told, exiting the vehicle and following Gabe as he entered the station. He walked up to the ticket counter and, smiling at the attendant, said, “Two tickets to Shelby, please.” He put a credit card and his I.D. on the counter for her to take.

  The woman, one of those women who was probably a little bit younger than she looked, checked her computer monitor. She grinned. “You’re in luck, Mr. Richardson,” she said. I shook my head slightly as the attendant said Gabe’s fake last name, Richardson. His I.D, like mine, still held his on-the-run alias. “The next bus leaves in about fifteen minutes.”

  “No trains?” Gabe asked.

  “No, if you wanted a train, you would have to wait about three hours, and you’d have to transfer to a bus later on. The trains don’t run all the way to Shelby.” She seemed concerned this news might cause Gabe to become angry with her. I assumed having people angry with her was a large part of the attendant’s job.

  “The bus will be fine, then,” Gabe said, still smiling.

  The attendant typed on her computer, entering in Gabe’s false information, and printed two tickets for him. She handed them across the counter and said, “I’d hurry if I were you; the bus is probably already filling up pretty fast.”

  Gabe nodded to her. “Do you know how long the trip is, by chance?”

  She bit her lip, nervous again. I couldn’t tell if she was just extremely nervous about getting yelled at by a customer or if Gabe’s overall appearance made her stand on guard. “The trip is supposed to be about two and a half hours, but you can count on three, if you want me to be honest.”

  Gabe turned away from the counter and handed me my ticket without another word to the attendant. “Shit,” he said. “Three hours one way is going to make today pretty hectic for us.”

  “Why are we going to Shelby?” I asked, still extremely confused.

  “I’ll explain more once we get there,” he said as we rushed through the terminal.

  I wasn’t at all surprised when Gabe barely spoke for the entire three hours and fourteen minutes we were on the bus. However, as we exited the city and made our way into the unremarkably Midwestern-looking portion of Illinois, I had plenty of time to think about how much it all reminded me of home, and how much I missed it back in Indiana. If not for passing signs with names of Illinois towns on them, I could have easily imagined myself on a road trip back home with my family. However, though I was equally as bored as I would have been on any road trip from my past life, this one had me confused and somewhat worried.

  Unfortunately, I also found myself pondering for the millionth time since leaving, what everyone was doing back in Hastings. I had communicated with Kip minimally, but other than the few pieces of information he would give me in his letters, I had no idea how everyone was doing, if they had completely recovered from Gabe and me blowing their world to pieces, or if they even thought about me as much as I thought about them, though I tried not to.

  I went over a mental list in my head.

  I knew Kip was doing okay, even if he had struggled at first. He was going out for track and seemed to be his old self, if not a little more mature in his letters.

  I knew Mom and Dad were back together, at least for the time being, and it seemed as if me skipping town had, to some extent, helped with that happening.

  I knew, because of my run-in with Riley, that she was doing as well as could be expected. Her bitterness and hatred aside, she was still in school and seemed to be succeeding at college and life.

  But there were still little things I didn’t know that bothered me to no end. How were Airic’s parents holding up? It had been over a year since he died, but I had no way of knowing if they had made a full recovery after losing their only son. Had they stayed in Hastings or made their way back to Cali
fornia, desperate to get away from the town where their son had lost his life? Had they helped the police try to find me, or had they just gone on with their lives, all too happy to pretend as if I had never known them?

  Was Dad still teaching?

  Was Mom still writing?

  What had happened to the few other friends I had left behind?

  What--

  “Are you coming?” Gabe asked, standing next to me as I continued to stare out the bus window. I noticed immediately we were sitting in another terminal and the sun had shifted in the sky, letting me realize the first leg of our journey was done.

  “Of course,” I said, trying not to make it too noticeable I had been in a complete daze.

  The seven other people who had exited the bus with us made their way to the entrance of the Shelby Bus Station, but Gabe turned and began to walk towards the road. I followed, but was, of course, as confused as ever.

  “Can you give me some information now?” I asked as we began our trek down the road.

  Kicking up dust as he walked, Gabe turned to me and pointed towards a bridge in the distance. I was probably about a mile away, and sitting behind it was a large factory with smokestacks pumping out white plumes of pollution into the sky. From what I could tell, Shelby consisted of little more than factories and bridges. “Do you see that?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a factory. Are we going to a factory?” I asked, still unsure of what he was trying to tell me. “Why would we go to a factory?”

  “We’re not going to the factory. We’re going to the bridge,” Gabe stated, without saying anything else.

  Twenty minutes later, we had reached the edge of the bridge that crossed a small river separating the factory from seemingly everything else in the area. No cars crossed the bridge in either direction, but it seemed as if the factory was the only thing in the world on the other side, so why would anyone need to cross unless they worked there?

  The factory, itself, looked like any other factory would, gray, dismal, dirty, and somewhat abandoned. Had the smokestacks not been working, I would have thought this place had long since been condemned.

  “What is this place?” I asked. At this point, even I was getting annoyed with my own questions, but Gabe hadn’t given me any new information since before speeding out of Chicago on a bus.

  “Come over here,” Gabe instructed as he climbed down the edge of the hill by the bridge leading to the churning water below. He held onto the edge of the bridge for support, but soon let go as he climbed beneath it, steadying himself on the rocks below.

  I followed, wobbling as the rocks shifted below my feet, hoping I wouldn’t lose my footing and tumble into the less-than-clean-looking water that was now just to my right. “Gabe, don’t freak out on me, but you’ve been acting really, really weird ever since… well, you know,” I said cautiously, not wanting to actually mention his beating.

  “Isn’t this place kind of cool?” he asked, looking around and picking up several of the rocks. He tossed them into the water where they made splashing sounds and sent a couple of fish swimming in the opposite direction.

  I hesitated. “It’s a bridge,” I said, not sure what else to say.

  “I know this all seems really strange, Jamie, but I had to get away for a little while. We’ve been under complete surveillance since the minute we left Weed. Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you feel like you’re part of some science experiment or something?”

  Truth be told, I didn’t completely agree with Gabe. It was a fact Harrison had likely been watching our each and every move as of late, but he had also spent more than a year looking for us after we fled Hastings. The man felt we owed him a debt, so it wasn’t completely unbelievable he wanted to keep us under close tabs, you know, in case we decided to run away again. However, through all of it, there hadn’t once been a time where I felt like I was being watched. I knew I was, but I didn’t feel like it.

  “Believe me when I say I’m not justifying anything this man has done, but I think he’s done a pretty good job of keeping his surveillance a secret from us. I mean, I’m sure he knows we know we’re being watched, but at least he does it from a distance. I haven’t even seen him once since we got off the plane in Chicago,” I said.

  “He’s watching us constantly.”

  “I know, but it just doesn’t feel like he is, you know?”

  Gabe shook his head. “Why do you think Geet came looking for you at the apartment the other night? He was looking for you because of something he saw you do, Jamie,” Gabe said cruelly.

  My stomach sank into my feet. “You got hurt because Geet couldn’t find me?” I asked.

  “Sort of. I stood up for you, lied for you, but that’s not the point. The point is you didn’t know you were being watched, and you screwed up big time.”

  I had a feeling I already knew what Gabe was talking about, but I decided to ask him anyway, trying to play dumb.

  “You ran into Riley at Bierce last week,” Gabe said flatly. “And you struck up a conversation with her.”

  I immediately tried to think of ways to defend myself. At the time, trying to talk to her seemed like the smartest thing I could do, but I also didn’t know that Geet must have been there, watching everything happen, watching Riley attempt to leave several times and me doing whatever I could to make her listen to me.

  “I didn’t know I would see her there,” I said quickly. “I only talked to her because I didn’t want her running to the police and telling them she had seen me at her school. I was trying to do some damage control, I swear.”

  Gabe nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “But why Bierce? There are dozens of colleges in Chicago, and you picked the one school where you might run into someone from our past. You picked the school Riley Frazier goes to, Jamie!”

  I knew the answer to this question without missing a beat, and I knew Gabe did too, but I explained Ben’s connections again anyway. Ben, thought a little over-privileged and egotistical, knew a lot of kids on campus with the money to spend on Manic. I had intended only to go to Bierce to find those kids. Running into Riley had just been a very unfortunate side effect.

  “Look, I know you think this Ben kid is alright, but I don’t think we need his help selling Manic. The last thing we need is another new face working with us. Look what happened to Ford,” Gabe said, not bothering to sugarcoat the fact hiring Ford had been my idea, too, and it had gotten him killed.

  I shook away the thought. “I’m sorry about what happened with Geet, but you’ve barely spoken to me since it happened. I know he… tortured you to get information about where I was or who I was talking to, but isn’t that a little bit of an extreme reaction to me talking to Riley for five minutes?” I asked. “And you still haven’t explained why we’re at this weird old factory, sitting under this tetanus-trap bridge.”

  “It was an overreaction, but it was purposeful. He was letting me, and you through me, know not to step out of line again. You’re just lucky you hadn’t come home by the time he showed up, or I’m sure you’d be sporting some nice bandages and taking antibiotics right now, too.”

  “And the bridge? The factory?” I asked.

  Gabe let out a sigh that told me he wasn’t sure how to continue on with our conversation, but he had brought us here for some reason. What was it?

  “This bridge is a special place for me,” he began. “But the factory is also very important. The factory is how we’re going to kill Harrison.”

  I had somewhat forgotten about that part of the plan. I still wasn’t on board with killing Harrison, but the more Gabe talked to me, the more I agreed with him that we weren’t as safe as I had originally thought we were. “Are you sure we need to kill him?” I asked.

  “Jamie, we have to,” Gabe said sternly. “Harrison will never let us go. He owns us right now, and even though he says we’re as good as free after we pay off our debt, there’s no way it will ever happen.”

  �
��How do you know that?”

  “Because I know how Harrison works. I’ve never mentioned it to you before, but I lived here, with Geet, a few years ago, before we ever met. Geet had just recently started working for Harrison, and I got to see some of the inner workings of his business while I was here. That factory across the river, that’s where Harrison makes all of his drugs. He runs it as a giant cover, says he manufactures some brand of whiskey or something… But I promise you, for every bottle of whiskey coming out of the factory, a hundred times more drugs come out.”

  I began to wonder immediately how this factory had anything to do with how we were going to kill Harrison, but it seemed as if Gabe was reading my mind. He continued to speak before I could even say a word.

  “Once a month, Harrison pays a visit to the factory in the middle of the night. He comes alone, and believe me, Harrison never goes anywhere alone. He drives here from downtown and does a walkthrough to make sure everything is running smoothly.”

  “That’s when you want to do it?” I asked.

  “It’s the only time we can do it,” Gabe stated. “Any other time, Harrison has at least five armed guards with him. He’s a very powerful man, even if most of the world doesn’t know he’s a drug kingpin.”

  The thought that Gabe had apparently spent the past six days contemplating the perfect way to kill our boss and captor terrified me. It made me realize just how serious he had been when he originally told me it was what we had to do.

  Gabe leaned back on the rocks, staring up at the bottom portion of the bridge. He seemed relaxed now that he had explained to me what we had to do. As he lay there, I saw on the stone pillar behind him helping to hold up the bridge a large G.M. scribbled in black paint. It looked worn and faded, but I knew he had made the mark years before. Next to Gabe’s initials were two more letters, B.D. He had said this place was special to him, but I still had no real idea why.

  “I can guess the G.M. stands for your name, but who is B.D? Why is this place so special to you?” I asked.

  Gabe smiled sadly. “That’s a story for another time.”

  We sat in silence for nearly a full minute before I decided to ask the next hard question.

  “So, what? We sneak out of the apartment, come to the factory, and… How do we do it?”

  I couldn’t believe I was going along with this. I had no idea how I was even entertaining the idea of murdering a man. I knew Harrison was a terrible person, probably a murderer himself, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around what Gabe was suggesting we do.

  “I guess shooting him would be the easiest, fastest way to get the job done,” Gabe said dryly.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Do you really think this is going to work?”

  “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” Gabe snorted. He seemed almost amused with himself, but I could tell he was at least a little bit concerned, too.

  I didn’t respond.

  “Look, Jamie, I know you’re not ready for this. I know you can’t kill anyone. But I’ve done it before. I thought my insides were going to explode when I shot that thug and Officer Jerkoff back in Hastings, but at least I’ve done it before… I think this time it will be a lot easier for me. This time, I know the person dying is a bad guy.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  Gabe sat up and stared directly into my eyes.

  “When the time comes, I’m the one who kills Harrison.”

  (A House Divided)