The Sapphire Express

by J. Max Cromwell

  The garbageman walked to the door and leaned down to look at the lock that had been bitten by the Condor. He seemed genuinely interested in the damn thing, and I used the opportunity to take him down. I pressed the Cheetah hard against his neck and activated the powerful cat with the push of a button. The garbageman fell to the floor as if he just had experienced a powerful epileptic seizure and started convulsing wildly. The man was out, but the clock of awakening was ticking fast.

  I rushed to the Econoline, grabbed the duct tape and the plastic wrapping from the cargo area, and sprinted back to the house. The garbageman was already coughing and trying to get up, and I kicked him in the face like Eric Cantona in his glory days, and the confused man fell immediately back to the floor. Then I choked him for ten seconds for extra security and tied his hands and mouth tightly with the duct tape and wrapped his body in plastic. I performed the entire task with the efficiency of a deranged Squirrel Island postal worker, and the package was ready for delivery in no time. It was Christmas again, and I felt like this time Santa was going to fucking deliver.

  I dragged the rapist through the living room and opened the front door wide. I shrugged indifferently as I kicked the package down the stairs and watched it roll all the way to the van like a runaway sausage at a Swedish midsummer festival.

  I felt happy about the way I had managed to handle the logistics and was ready to finish my work, but then something interesting caught my eye. There was a brand-new Porsche 911 Carrera parked behind the Econoline. I had never owned a sports car before, and I looked at the curious vehicle pensively for a couple of mischievous seconds. Then I started walking toward it with a fabulous plan brewing in my rascal’s mind.

  I peeked through the Porsche’s window and noticed that the keys were still in the ignition. Great! I jumped in the driver’s seat, turned the engine on, and the Porsche woke up with a powerful rumble that flushed out a pair of shorebirds that had been hiding in the reeds. I moved the car so that its headlights pointed straight at the ocean and marveled at the beauty of the coastal scenery for a brief, beautiful moment. The Porsche was still in drive, and I lifted my foot off the brake. Then I jumped out of the car quickly and watched in awe as the luxurious vehicle started rolling down the slope like a blind stallion. The poor bastard didn’t understand the horrible danger it was in as it inched closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. Then, suddenly, the sleek taillights disappeared into the emptiness, and the beautiful driving machine crashed into the sharp rocks with an eighty-thousand-dollar bang. Just like that, the marvel of German engineering was gone. I had no reason to murder the poor thing in such a cruel way, but I just couldn’t waste a juicy opportunity like that. The little kid was still alive somewhere inside me, and he was happy and excited, so why the hell not?

  Crashing the Porsche was the day’s entertainment portion, and, sadly, I had to go back to work. I needed to get the garbageman inside Larry Number 2 and get the hell out of Dodge. I had no time to waste because the rapist was much bigger than I had anticipated, and the unfortunate fact was that I was in for a real workout.

  I pulled the hand truck out of the Econoline and used it to drop the big man into Larry Number 2s welcoming belly. He didn’t want to settle in his first-class seat to hell without a fight, and I had to climb on top of him and jump on his chest like a carnival monkey to get him all the way in. I hadn’t been in a bouncy castle for a long time, and I had to return to the kitchen and get another bottle of water after I was done jumping. It was hard work, and I finally understood why they didn’t make those things for grown-ups.

  Once Larry Number 2 had its lid secured in position, I maneuvered the hand truck under it and lifted the rapist into the van. There was plenty of room for him in the Econoline’s giant mouth, but I was still a little concerned for his well-being because the man needed to be in the box for several hours, and the bastard was already badly battered. My plan was to drive all the way to the slim man’s grave, and the inconvenient truth was that the journey was going to become the garbageman’s Via Dolorosa. I truly hoped that he would survive the ride because I wanted to talk to him about his crimes and get some answers, but I accepted that death was a real possibility. Well, c’est la vie! The man was going to be returned to his maker anyway. The product was defective beyond repair and keeping it would have been simply unwise.

  I returned to the house for one last time and used bleach to wipe clean all the spots that possibly had any traces of my DNA on them. Then I went upstairs, entered the cave, put one of the DVDs in the player, and scattered the rest of them on the table next to the computers.

  As I was about to leave the room, I noticed a pen and a pack of yellow Post-it Notes on the desk. I picked up a note and wrote on it: “I can’t live with myself anymore. Only the wild ocean will wash away my sins and set me free. Please forgive me.” Then I walked out of the room and left the door wide open. I figured that when the cops—or whoever would come there first—would find the DVDs and the note, they would lose interest in the investigation quickly. They had more important things to do than trying to find out if there was foul play involved in the disappearance of a child rapist—even if the terrace door had been opened with a machete, and there was a brand-new Porsche resting in peace on the rocks below.

  When I was done with the cleaning, I closed the front door and looked at the house thoughtfully. It felt somewhat unnerving that a total stranger could just arrive there with his creepy van and take away its owner. I wasn’t sure if the garbageman had ever fully realized how easy it was to hurt him. Maybe he thought that he was invincible because of all his success and wealth, but the fact was that he didn’t have a bulletproof skin or a heart that just kept on beating when it was cut in half with a field skinner.

  When I thought about the whole thing more carefully, it felt almost unfair that a man with such a tremendous fortune and clout was physically as vulnerable as any homeless man sleeping on a dirty park bench. He probably regretted that he hadn’t been born a little later in the century because it was only a matter of time before a man with his resources would be able to buy some real security. A synthetic, unstoppable heart and a skin that was, in fact, bulletproof were perhaps waiting for him in the future. How sad it was that a man like that was stuck in a world that was so rudimentary and manual that the future children would one day be laughing at us so hard that their bellies would ache. They would laugh exactly as hard as their own children would one day laugh at them.

  I arrived at the slim man’s grave in total darkness after a long and tedious drive. It was eerie out there, and the fact that I had buried the bones of two men in the forest already, had transformed it into something quite unexpected. It was now the land of the dead, and for the first time, I started to feel its hate in my heart. It wasn’t a particularly strong hate, but it was still heavy and suffocating, and I knew that the forest was disappointed in me. A wise man could have said that it was just a mindless collection of trees, but to me, it was much more than that. There was something in those woods that made me shiver in fear, and that something was now watching me with insulted eyes.

  I parked the Econoline under the mighty oak and went to check on the garbageman. I figured that there was a 50 percent chance that he was still alive. The truth was that he was a big, overweight man, and his mouth had been taped shut for hours. The holes I had drilled in the box had probably helped him to breathe a little better, but there wasn’t much spare air in the Econoline’s cargo space to begin with.

  I opened the rear doors quickly and jumped into the van like a nimble shadow cat. Then I removed the lid from the box with the help of the machete and was pleased to see that the doomed man was still breathing. He was, however, unconscious, and his face was swollen, and it had an unhealthy blue hue. I knew immediately that there was no time to waste if I wanted to keep him alive. The man was already pounding on the gates of hell like an enraged mountain ape, and I could hear the devil’s keys rattling in the distance.

 
I poured two bottles of water on his head and pulled off the tape that covered his mouth. Then I removed all the plastic wrappings around his body with the field skinner and put the rapist on the chair and cuffed him carefully. The man was still unconscious, but it was time to wake up now. I let the Cheetah bite him hard on his left arm, and it seemed to activate his senses. His eyes started spinning, and saliva was dripping from his hanging tongue like he had no care in the world. The garbageman was going to make it.

  I waited patiently for him to return to the real world and forced water into his open mouth every ten minutes or so. He drank it all like a good boy, and after about forty-five minutes into the revival session, the rapist started waking and was soon spitting and coughing like a man who had ascended to the ocean surface from sixty feet without scuba gear. I slapped him gently on his right cheek, and the tired man uttered quietly, “What, what happened? Have I been in an accident?”

  I looked at him and said, “Yes, sort of. You got bitten by a cheetah.”

  He shook his head and said in a slurred voice, “Bitten by a cheetah…what, why?”

  I got up and slapped him hard on his left cheek and said, “Look, it’s wakey-wakey time now, garbageman. This is the great Day of Atonement, and you have a chance to confess your crimes against humanity and the environment. Yes, I know about the toxic barrels in the bottom of the ocean just off Cape Verde. I also know what you like to do to young African girls in your free time. I know it all, so you don’t have to lie to me. Only truth will set you free, understood?”

  The garbageman raised his head slowly and asked, “Am I a prisoner?”

  “Yes, you are. I kidnapped you from your vacation home and brought you here so I can kill you.”

  He was quiet for a moment and said, “Where are we?”

  “We are in a national forest far away from your beautiful cliffside home. You will never go back there again. It’s a pity because it truly is a wonderful place for a man who loves the ocean so much. I especially liked the man cave. Well, let’s just call it a cave because I don’t think you are a man.”

  “Why are you torturing me?” he asked quietly.

  “I am not torturing you. At least that was not my intention. I don’t believe in torture. The ride from your house was rough, I know, and I’m sorry that it had to go down like that.”

  The garbageman looked straight into my eyes and asked, “Why does a man who kidnapped me and beat me like a dog apologize for anything?”

  I didn’t answer, but I had to agree that it was somewhat caustic to apologize for anything at that point. The obvious conclusion was, therefore, to stop apologizing.

  The garbageman lowered his sweaty head, and I studied him carefully. He wasn’t a tough man in spite of his proven evilness. He wasn’t the kind of beast that I had seen in my dreams. He was like an overgrown child who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. The picture that Ramses had shown me at Johnny D’s had depicted a much more confident man, a man who was powerful and arrogant. But this one was a coward, a creation of another man. There was no question about that.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I am going to kill you tonight, but I would like to wait a little while before doing it. I wanna hear your side of the story, if that’s OK with you. Or do you want me to take your life now? I can do that if you insist.”

  The garbageman raised his head and said, “I don’t really care.”

  I was surprised to hear that, and I said, “If I were you, I would talk to me for thirty minutes. You know, the cops may come and save your sorry ass. There might even be an earthquake that will flip this van over and kill me. Who knows what will happen in thirty minutes, but if I kill you now, you have absolutely no chance of surviving. You have nothing to lose, man. Don’t fold your hand before at least looking at your cards.”

  The garbageman didn’t say anything so I continued, “Come on, man. Where is your will to survive? Haven’t you seen those little yellow flowers growing in the crack of a freeway? That’s the benchmark for survival. Just fight a little, that’s all I am asking for.”

  He looked and me limply and said, “OK, we can talk if you want.”

  “Good, I said. Do you want some water?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I got up and uncuffed the garbageman’s right hand and gave him a bottle of Poland Spring. He drank half of it and said to me, “OK, let’s talk, but first you need to tell me why I’m here.”

  I looked at him and said calmly, “A group of tree huggers put a contract on you. They believe that killing an environmental criminal is a lesser sin than letting him live and pollute half the fish in West Arica to death. No offense, but I tend to agree with them.”

  He looked surprised and said, “Environmentalists, huh? That is interesting. And you are the valiant contract killer who allows them to commit a murder by proxy?”

  “No, not exactly. I am just a man who took the job voluntarily. Well, I do get paid, but killing people is not my real job.”

  The garbageman looked at me judgmentally and asked, “What gives you the right to take my life?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Something, or somebody, must give me that right, though, because I am here with a loaded Sig Sauer in my bag, and you are there in handcuffs. I have no better explanation than that, sorry.”

  He sighed deeply and asked, “So you expect me to believe that you are just a regular Joe who wants to kill a man he doesn’t even know?”

  “No, I am not a regular Joe. I am not a contract killer, either. I am just a weird organism with nothing to lose.”

  “What happened to you, man? When did things start to go wrong?”

  “Well, a shadow behind the wheel killed my daughter, and my wife died soon after. That kind of changed me, and I have transformed into something. I don’t know exactly what that something is, but the new me likes to kill assholes like you. Maybe I was brought into this world to do this, I don’t know, but here I stand and stare at you, the boogeyman himself. That’s all there is to it, I guess.”

  “So I have to suffer because you weren’t able to protect your daughter?”

  When he said that, I clenched the field skinner hard, but I didn’t do anything. I remained calm because getting upset at a man whom I had already decided to kill wouldn’t have been very productive. I just looked at him nonchalantly and said, “I did try to take care of her the best I could; I really did. I’m not sure if I can be blamed for some crackhead’s decision to do sixty on a suburban street.”

  “You could have stayed closer to her and kept her away from the car.”

  I exhaled hard and said, “Look, shitbird, I come from a family who takes good care of our kids, but we don’t keep them locked inside the house all the time. We let them run around and play with bugs and whatever. My parents brought me up that way, and I became that kind of father, too. I mean, what do you want me to do? Go and dig up my father’s corpse and tell him that he should have fucking raised me differently? Tell him that he should have taught me to always keep my children at arm’s length because a stoned maniac may appear out of nowhere and kill them with a goddamn Ford Bronco?”

  The garbageman didn’t say anything.

  “So, that is my story,” I said. “What is your excuse? What the fuck do you have against the fish and the ocean? You tell your men to dump toxic barrels overboard when the night falls, and then you retire to a nice house by the sea when the hard day is over. You are pissing in your own fish taco, you moron.”

  He looked at me apathetically and asked, “So I should live in a landfill because I get rid of trash that nobody wants?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, yes, you should. You shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy the ocean because you are destroying it. Don’t you fucking understand that?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Why do you have to do shit like that, garbageman, why?”

  He remained quiet.

 
“You better tell me, right now, garbageman, or I will hurt you.”

  He sighed deeply, shook his head, and said quietly, “I do it for my father.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, you know, when I got my first C in the second grade, he told me that if Stalin’s doctors would perform a lobotomy on me, it would actually increase my IQ. My father has always believed that I am an idiot. He never forgot to remind me that I would die as a penniless loser. He wanted me to fail.”

  “So you blame your father for your crimes?”

  “No, but that is the reason I have this crazy obsession to make money and succeed at all costs. I want to prove him wrong, even if I have to take dangerous shortcuts. I also like hurting people, even if I know that it’s wrong. I am twisted; I know that. I have been in therapy for almost twenty years now, but nothing can fix me. I am like a sheet of paper that my shithead father crumpled with his ugly hands. The stupid doctors believe that they can make it smooth again, but even a child knows that it is impossible.”

  “Maybe the therapy made you crazy?”

  “I don’t know, but I just wanted to show my father that I am not a loser. Do you understand at all where I’m coming from?”

  “No, not really. I mean, you are only successful because you are a cheater, a fraud. You don’t follow the rules. Any asshole can dump chemicals into the ocean and pollute the environment. If your father found out how you make your money, he would say that you are an even bigger loser than he thought was humanly possible. You have failed your father, garbageman. You have failed the man you should have never tried to please in the first place. He is a piece of shit, based on what you just told me.”

  The garbageman didn’t say anything.

  “What else did he do to you? Did he rape you? Is that the real reason why you like to torture those little girls in Freetown?”