The small group let out a collective sigh of disappointment, then traipsed down several more aisles, Bob pulling down a small flag marked #9 along the way. Glenn hoped this wasn’t the locker he had that feeling about. That would have been disappointing.
They finally came to a widened area at the far end of the facility where the buyers could spread out and breathe a bit. There were fifteen ten-foot-by-ten-foot units in the little cul-de-sac, three of them marked with the familiar flags. Glenn walked quickly to #10 before the owner could snip the lock and looked at the door. He felt nothing. He moved three doors down to #11 and looked at it. Once again, nothing. He shrugged, made his way across the wide hallway to #12. He looked at the orange aluminum door, its rough face crisscrossed with dozens if not hundreds of scratches, and knew. Knew that this was the one. He looked back to the group, where the men and women were busily examining the contents of #10. All except for Emilio, who was looking at Glenn. The fat man offered a toothless smile which looked borderline grotesque on his frog-like face. Glenn turned from him and walked to #11.
When this unit was finally opened, Glenn made a show of looking interested. He tried to shine his flashlight in all the corners, tried to maneuver his little mirror-on-a-stick he had brought with him in every cranny. It was an intriguing locker to be sure. Two boxes labeled electronics. Two boxes labeled books. Three boxes labeled clothing. Some furniture. Some artwork stacked against the back wall. He thought he spied some baseball bats and hockey sticks leaning against a corner. Signed stuff, possibly. But even if they weren’t collectibles, used-but-not-too-worn sporting equipment almost always brought in a pretty penny on eBay and Craig’s List and in thrift shops. Stuff like that could be expensive new, and struggling middle-class parents were always looking for deals for gear for their kids. Taken as a whole, it looked like the personal contents of a studio apartment of a twenty or thirty year old. There was sure to be some value there.
“Starting bid is $10,” Carl said, and Glenn had no doubt that the price would rocket quickly. Now he needed to convince Emilio that this was the one he wanted. Because he knew that Emilio couldn’t resist the urge to try and take it from him. Their mutual history demanded that Emilio try to steal away something he wanted.
Glenn raised his hand for the first time when the bid got up to $250. He quickly helped get it up to $350. At that point, when the bidding stalled, Glenn wondered if he had made a mistake. He looked at Emilio, then quickly back at the open locker.
Fuck me, he thought, a small bead of sweat sprouting on his forehead. If Emilio called his bluff and refused to outbid him, if no one else chose to raise the bid, if he had to spend three fifty on this unit, he knew—he just knew—that the fat Mexican would outspend him on the last unit. The one he really wanted. Just to keep him from having it. Emilio was a bastard, after all. And the fat man, he still held a grudge after Glenn had bluffed him out of a unit two years ago that had contained a box full of signed music memorabilia, most of which still graced the walls of his house in LA.
“Four hundred,” Emilio said in his somewhat broken English as he raised his hand.
“Four and a quarter,” Glenn said on impulse.
“Four-fifty,” a third man chimed in.
“Four seventy-five,” Glenn said. He wanted Emilio to have it. Needed Emilio to have it.
“Five hundred,” Emilio said, his face splitting into another awful grin.
Glenn put a hand in his pocket and fumbled around. He shot Emilio a small concerned look, then pulled his face away. “Five and a quarter.”
“Five fifty,” Emilio added, and Glenn left it at that. He sighed, perhaps more demonstratively than necessary, but he wanted the fat Mexican to think he felt defeated. Sure, Emilio could still have enough cash in his stained pockets to buy the last unit, too, if he truly wanted it. There was no way to know. And no way to stop him. But that was part of the game. And part of the risk.
“Five fifty, five fifty. Anyone going to five seventy-five? Five fifty, going once, five fifty going twice, sold for five fifty.”
Glenn skipped backwards, head turned down, eyes on the ground. He smelled the sour scent of Emilio as he squeezed by, felt the man’s greasy bulk nudge him as he went, and the simple touch made Glenn feel ill. He looked up in time to see Emilio pull the door down on his purchase.
Bob Jensen moved to the final unit, the buyers following like lemmings. There were few people left, only a dozen of the original thirty. Some hadn’t spent any money and would be desperate to buy anything. Some lingered out of simple curiosity. But Glenn, he wanted this unit, and he had enough money where he thought he should be able to buy it as long as none of the newbies got stupid and outbid him just so they didn’t go home empty handed. He just couldn’t appear too eager, cause that could draw the interest of Emilio, who was one of the few people still around. And Emilio could and would steal it from him simply out of spite.
The owner kneeled down and snipped off the lock. He peeled the broken pieces away and opened the door—
—and the men and women were greeted by a large drape hanging four feet inside, black as night and effectively cutting the unit in half. A musty smell seemed to push out from behind the curtain, the acrid odor catching many of the men off guard. Despite this, Glenn knew that what he had come for rested behind the curtain. This was why he was here.
“Well, you don’t see this every day,” Bob said, examining the drape but not going inside. The rules applied to him as well. Glenn watched him, noted the curiosity and wonder that danced across his chubby, wrinkled face. He shined his own flashlight at the curtain, but the dark material just swallowed the beam with the same absolute hunger with which a black hole swallowed light.
He wants to pull it aside, Glenn thought. But that’s against the rules.
As if reading his mind, Carl turned to the property owner and said, “Can’t touch it, Bob. You know the rules.”
Bob snapped his attention back at the remaining buyers. He cleared his throat but kept quiet. Glenn wondered if the property owner could bid on one of his own units.
“Bidding will start at ten dollars,” Carl said. Several of the remaining buyers turned and left, their curiosity piqued but outweighed by their unwillingness to lay down cash on something so mysterious. The rat brothers left, as did the tall Cajun. Emilio stayed, though, as did a handful of locals.
“Ten dollars,” Glenn said.
“Fifty dollars,” Emilio countered, and Glenn looked at him, his eyes saying you got what I wanted, just let me have this. Emilio responded with one of his sly, disturbing smiles, and Glenn sighed. The man was not complicated; his exaggerated expressions conveyed his every thought, and Glenn knew instantly what Emilio was doing. He would let Glenn have it. But it would cost him.
“Seventy-five,” Glenn said.
“A hundred and twenty-five.”
“One fifty.”
None of the remaining auction hunters took part in this little competition, but they watched the back and forth with intense interest, some trying to learn the art while others just enjoyed the drama.
“Two hundred,” Emilio countered.
Glenn looked at him with a frown.
“I know you got at least four fifty, gringo,” he said in his heavy accent.
Glenn looked at the auctioneer. “Two twenty-five.” He turned back to Emilio and pulled one of the biggest bluffs in his life. “At two fifty, Emilio, it’s yours,” he said. “Smells like death back there. You can clean up—or cook—whatever’s died back there.”
Emilio studied Glenn, his glassy eyes trying to dissect the man and his intentions. After a moment, he offered a massive snort, then turned and left, waddling back the way they had come.
“Two twenty-five,” Carl said. “I got two twenty-five. Two fifty, two fifty. Anyone offering two fifty?” He paused for a moment, nodded at the silence that followed, and said, “Sold for two hundred and twenty-five dollars.”
Glenn let out a lungful of air he didn�
��t know he had been holding.
The rest of the onlookers turned and left, following Emilio out of the cul-de-sac. Glenn pulled out two hundred and twenty-five dollars from his pocket and paid Bob. He looked at the man, who was clearly distracted as he accepted the payment, and saw the curiosity brimming in his eyes. The way he looked at the curtain… there was something covetous in that stare, a bizarre response considering the bizarre smell coming from within. Maybe Bob felt the same thing he felt. Glenn knew he could lock the unit and come back in a couple of hours, try to empty it before Bob knew what was happening. But there was always the chance that Bob would cut off the lock, peer inside and replace it with one of his own if he saw something he liked. A dangerous and illegal stunt, of course; Glenn was now the rightful owner of the unit. But curiosity caused good people to do stupid things.
In the end, Glenn decided that there was really only one thing for him to do. “Want to see what’s behind that curtain, Bob?” he asked, smiling at the older man.
Bob’s own lips spread into a smile, not a pretty sight considering how red and chapped they were.
“Then let’s take a peek, why don’t we,” Glenn said. By this point, Carl had also disappeared, leaving the two men alone. Excitement was pounding in Glenn’s chest. He had no idea what to expect, no idea why his instincts had directed him to this mysterious storage unit. But he was about to find out.
Chapter 2
Michael Malone threw his briefcase onto the bed, kicked the loafers off his weary feet, shrugged his suit coat onto the floor, and began to undo the knot of his tie, which felt like it had been strangling him for the past hour. Despite the massive amount of deodorant he had used that morning, and despite the undershirt he wore, he knew that he had sweated through to the pits of his powder blue dress shirt. Just knowing that he would find large, saucer-sized stains under his arms when he got the shirt off made him feel dirty. He rapidly undid the buttons down the front, popping a loose specimen onto the floor in his haste to get undressed. He pulled off the shirt, peeled off the undershirt, and slid off his pants, all so rapidly that it appeared to be a single acrobatic motion. Suddenly naked except for the black socks pulled up to his knees and a pair of plaid boxers, he moved in front of the nearest vent, which was furiously pumping out cold air to combat the perpetual dry heat of the desert.
God I hate Las Vegas, Michael thought as he slowly rotated in front of the frigid air like a rotisserie chicken. Hot even in the god damn spring. But he had little choice in the matter. You went where the company sent you, and the company sent you to where the conventions were held, and every three years the largest dental convention in the country hosted their annual event in Vegas (this year it was at the Bellagio). And since he was a senior regional sales rep for CoreGen, the company that had just developed the next generation dental implant that promised high success rates at a ridiculously low cost, he was expected to attend the event personally. Of course, CoreGen was too cheap to put Michael and his three associates up at the Bellagio, so they were staying cross town at Treasure Island, which meant he actually had to go outside to get from his room to the convention. At least there was storage space at the Bellagio for his equipment so he didn’t have to haul his products around town each day.
If he had learned one thing about dentists over the past ten years, besides the fact that he hated going to them, it was that they liked to play golf. And party. And gamble. To that end, they cycled between Vegas, Cancun and The Bahamas every three years. Michael preferred the more tropical destinations. True, they were hot. And humid. But they were on fucking beaches, not in the middle of the fucking desert. And in his mind, that made all the difference.
Thankfully, it was Saturday night and only one day of chaos remained. Tomorrow night he would be on a plane winging his way back East, to his home, to his family, to familiar surroundings and more pleasant weather. He much preferred to talk to doctors in one-on-one settings in their offices and in small groups at schools than deal with the frantic pace of a convention floor where the people he talked to tended to have the attention span of a three year old. They stopped by, chatted for a minute or two, feigned interest in many cases, grabbed some pamphlets and free pens and candy, then moved onto the next vendor, looking for a better deal. And more free stuff. But being visible at these conventions was a necessary evil when competition was stiff, and truth be told, the company did sell a good amount of product most years, which made it worth the time and hassle.
Michael looked at the clock on the end table next to the bed. It was five-thirty. He had made plans with the rest of the contingent from CoreGen to meet at the buffet downstairs at six-fifteen. That gave him forty-five minutes to shower, dress and relax. Not a whole lot of time, but enough.
He sat on the edge of his bed, pulled off his socks, then stood and dragged down his boxers. Naked as the day he was born, but with quite a few more wrinkles and freckles and unsightly bulges, he made his way to the bathroom where the promise of a nice hot shower beckoned him. He looked at himself in the mirror and grimaced at the man who looked back at him. He swore that his already thinning brown hair had grown even sparser since he touched down in Vegas two days ago. His brown eyes, normally wide and vibrant, were half closed, dark bags dangling underneath. The muscles around his mouth were sore from all the smiling he had to do all day, resulting in a slight frown. And his normally pale flesh had taken on an even paler cast from dehydration and exhaustion. His body would rebound after the convention ended, but he hated what these events did to him. They simply ran him ragged. He stepped back from the mirror, patted the small paunch around his middle that he had developed over the past several years, and sighed. It wasn’t as bad as what many men his age carried around, certainly not a full spare tire, but it wasn’t something he was proud of. As he leaned into the shower and turned on the water, he vowed to work out a little more and eat a little better when he got home.
He put one foot in the shower, the gentle pounding of water on his aching foot feeling like heaven, when a phone rang in the main room. It wasn’t the hotel phone. It was a cell phone. Not his personal cell phone and not his office cell phone, but the disposable cell phone he had bought yesterday morning upon arriving in the City of Sin.
He paused when he heard the ring, then pulled his foot from the shower and half hopped, half shambled to where he had dropped his jacket on the floor. Fingers flying, he pulled all three phones from an inside pocket, then answered the one that was ringing.
“Brian,” a feminine voice purred from the other end.
“Uh, yeah, this is Brian,” Michael stammered, feeling instantly guilty and just plain awful about himself.
“Are we still on for tonight?”
“Umm, yeah.” Though at the moment he honestly didn’t know if he still wanted to. He had made the call in a moment of weakness yesterday, and now that he had had time to think about it, he wasn’t so sure if he wanted to go through with this.
“Ten o’clock?”
“Uh…”
“It’s okay to back out, Brian. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
A moment of hesitation, then: “No, no. I’ll meet you in the lobby. Ten. I’ll be wearing a Yankees hat.”
“Until then.”
“Until then.”
Michael turned off the phone, tossed it onto his pile of clothing, and sat his bare ass on the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in open palms. His heart was beating so quickly he thought he could hear it. He didn’t know if the wild pulse in his chest was a sign of excitement or guilt, but either way, it was a reminder that he was still alive. He didn’t know if he was a bad man or a desperate man for what he planned on doing, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered at the moment was that he was still a man, a man with normal, healthy urges and passions.
Better to be a bad man, better to be a desperate man, than an empty man. An empty man had no reason to live.
He needed to do this, regardless of what it said a
bout him.
As he was about to return to the shower, his personal cell phone rang. He picked it up from the floor, looked at the caller ID, and swallowed hard. It was his wife. He considered letting the call go to voice mail. He didn’t trust himself to speak at the moment. But it was either now or later; he had promised her they would talk tonight and if he ignored her, she would worry, and that wasn’t fair to her.
After another moment of hesitation, he answered.
“Hey, Vanessa,” he said, trying to stretch a smile onto his face.
Guilt swallowed him whole as she spoke to him in that sweet, wonderful voice he had fallen in love with all those years ago…
But all the guilt in the world wouldn’t change his plans for the evening.
It was as simple as that.
Chapter 3
Glenn looked at the sheet, wondered what was behind it. He flicked the light switch by the entranceway, which caused a bulb behind the curtain to flare to life. His imagination began to run wild. He wondered why the owner had hung the sheet, decided that whoever had rented the locker didn’t want anyone else to see what was back there, either because it was illegal or expensive. Or simply because he was a little paranoid or secretive. Maybe it was drugs. Or drug-making devices. A meth lab, maybe. Hell, he had seen a CSI episode where a rogue doctor was doing gender reassignment surgery in a storage locker. That memory sobered him up, made him a little paranoid, and he allowed his mind to drift to more pleasant thoughts. He began to think of the type of big prizes people won on the Price is Right. A Sea-Doo water craft. A motorcycle or two. An expensive grandfather clock. A bedroom set. The possibilities were endless, and Glenn finally just shook his head, a small smile on his face. Why wonder about it when he could just walk back there and see.
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