by Sam Jones
The two men seated on either side of her were dressed in plain, limo driver-like suits – flat fabric, muted tones, nothing glitzy about it in the slightest. Both of them had a grip on her elbows, enough pressure applied to hint at potential broken bones, in case she got a wild hair up her ass and tried to flee.
She breathed heavily through the bag over her head. Her and the goons were in the backseat of a vehicle, on the move, as far as Amanda could tell.
The two thugs escorting her had taken her at gunpoint outside the club, not long after Black went inside and turned the scene into some steroid-injected version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It was only moments after he went in when they arrived. As if it were expected, maybe even scheduled. Amanda was stunned when she saw the ruffians’ faces but not entirely surprised.
People have been following me.
One of them rapped on the windshield with his knuckles. The other one pointed an index finger to the blinking red light where the door lock was located.
Open it…
She shook her wrists. The plastic cuffs Black threw on her dug in and left red marks.
The thug knocked on the windshield again. Harder.
Just wait for Black. Maybe—
As soon as she heard the muffled gunshots start up inside the club, her mind had concluded the worst-case scenario: Black was dead.
She wanted to run, but where could she run? She wanted to fight, but what were the chances of surviving? Being zip-cuffed to the steering wheel was making this easier for her potential kidnappers. ‘Deer in the headlights’ popped into her mind.
One, final, hard knock on the glass. The suited-up foes were getting restless.
Amanda hyperextended her pinky and managed to undo the door locks. The roughnecks then cut her loose, threw her in the back seat, re-cuffed her, and threw a thick piece of black canvas over her head. It reeked like bad cologne, sweat, and dare she say it: blood. They drove somewhere, took her out, put her in the back of another car, and drove off.
The cuffs dug in, harder. The pain brought her out of the haze that was Martin Black and thrust her back into reality. Black had been iced out, and she was, once again, on her own.
Sweat was beginning to soak the pits of Amanda’s shirt and gray hooded sweater as the driver up front said—
“We’re here.”
The car stopped. They waited. A door opened. Someone got inside.
One of the goons took the bag off of Amanda’s head. She then laid eyes on the man who had just entered what Amanda now discovered to be a stretch limo with blacked out windows—
He was average height and built like a wide receiver. His face was oval-shaped. Blonde hair with streaks of copper were slicked back and held rigidly in place, a style meant for quick and easy maintenance, because grooming to him was frivolous past basic hygiene.
His apparel was something straight out of contemporary men’s fashion: a gray, tight, well-cut suit that molded around his toned arms and slightly accentuated his shoulders. A shirt made of blue, lightweight fabric clung to his chest. His right hand rested across his left breast. Something was making him wince in invisible pain, but his eyes, an ominous shade of fluorescent-like blue that rested below a pair of arched eyebrows, never advertised his internal affliction.
He looked upon her admirably with a sort of sideways smirk, like he was seeing an old friend or woman he had once dated. Liveliness in his eyes. It was a lot for a man who was never that physically expressive.
When he spoke; hints of an East German accent swam around his words. Subtle and sultry. His voice was deep in a traditional, masculine sense, yet somehow elegant. His tone was a chilled wind that whistled in Amanda’s ears and sent chills up her spine. It was an entrancing fog that lured in its prey with exotic appeal before swallowing it alive—
“Hello, Amanda,” he said.
She bit her lip. She had no idea what was happening but she felt her sense of paranoia over the last year had been validated.
At least I’m not crazy.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Roenick.”
The way he said it made it feel like she put a face to the shadow she felt over her shoulder ever since Richie returned from Vegas with money and updated policies and procedures of the Dubin household.
“I apologize for the showmanship,” said Roenick. “I understand how difficult this must be for you. Thrust into a situation you have no knowledge or understanding of.”
Roenick’s slightly pouty lower lip screamed a sort of subtle disappoint. “Your husband is dead,” he said. “You hired someone to kill him? Yes?”
Amanda looked down at a floor mat, her right hand now clenched in a fist, knuckles white. She felt angry and relieved, all at the same time.
Roenick looked into her eyes. She had to look away. When the man focused on her, it was like a tractor beam slowly reeling into her soul. Lying to him was a non-starter. All he needed to do was fixate his sharp diamond eyes to surpass any need to weed out the bullshit from the facts.
You just confessed.
“The man you hired. Martin Black was his name?”
She didn’t reply. Roenick didn’t expect her to. He didn’t need her to. He already knew the truth.
The thug on Amanda’s left produced something in his free hand: Black’s courier case.
“This was in the back seat of the car we found her in. I think it belongs to the same guy,” he said.
Roenick examined the case like someone appraising an antique. Delicately. Admirably.
He smirked. Shook his head. Placed the bag down.
“It’s you,” Amanda said. “When Richie got back home from Vegas that day he had changed… definitely wasn’t for the better. I thought a man named Greg was responsible but I’m starting to feel like I was wrong about who I was holding accountable… You’re the one that’s been holding me hostage.”
Roenick nodded. Then he smiled.
“You don’t know how long I had to look for you,” he said. “When I found you...”
Roenick couldn’t finish. It was as if whatever sentiment he was about to confess was too painful to express.
He squinted, again, at the agony wrenching his insides. He went to touch a hand to the area it was gathering in but, instead, used the momentum to pull out a cell phone.
“Can you explain to me exactly what your plan was when you hired Martin Black?” he asked Amanda.
“To kill my husband.”
“And you really think killing him would have helped you break free? You know as well as I do, Amanda, that it wasn’t Richie who’s been holding you on a leash. You’re smart enough, I’m sure, to know that the gut feeling you had of being shadowed was by someone far more intelligent and crafty than your, shall I say, blockhead of a husband.”
Amanda felt guilty, confused, sick to her stomach. But Amanda Dubin was tough, despite having been at her wit’s end for some time.
“Why?” she asked. “Why have you been doing this?”
“Because I need you...”
This is a dream. Martin Black wasn’t real. This guy isn’t real.
Just wake up.
“What happened to him?” Amanda asked.
“The man you hired?” inquired Roenick.
“Yes.”
“He’s alive… I’m not quite sure where he is, we’re waiting to hear on that bit, but he’s alive.”
Amanda felt a glimmer of hope. It was far-reaching, but still encouraging. “He might come after me.”
Roenick looked at Amanda with a mixture of sympathy and offense as he switched gears. “My dear… You are more important to me than you could ever know. I searched low and high to find you. I’ve given you money, your own home, a life with your husband—”
“My husband…” she said, the word making her recoil as if she had tasted expired milk. “You tainted his mind and hooked him on drugs, you sick piece-of-shit. He was my husband, at some point, but you turned him into a spineless
babysitter. And your bitch, apparently.”
“Drugs were the bane of his existence. And your bad attitude has been yours. If you weren’t so pessimistic all the time, perhaps you would enjoy life, if only just a little bit.”
“You can’t control me. I’m done living like this.”
“What do you plan on doing? What do you think is happening here?”
She swallowed, rocks in her throat. “I think you’re going to kill me once you’ve gotten whatever it is you want from me.”
“I would never hurt you.”
“I doubt that…”
Roenick, again, gave a little smirk. “Amanda… I came here because I need you to understand your purpose. It’s important that you remain calm. Docile. I cannot continue to have you stirring things up. I lost Gregory as a result of it.”
She felt weak at the knees. A hazy state of mind began to return.
“Why am I here?” she asked.
“Twice you have caused a problem. The first was a year ago, when you tried to report Richie to the police.”
Amanda remembered the day as vividly as she did when she had a night terror. It somehow snowballed to her thinking about her miscarriage. That particular memory was substantially more painful than the first one.
“The second time you attempted to disrupt me was with the hiring of Martin Black,” said Roenick. “I will not kill you because I need you. But that does not mean I cannot dissuade you from acting out again.”
One of the thugs next to Amanda pulled out a gray radio that was clasped to his belt. He pressed a button on the side and spoke into it—
“O’Reilly. Find a target. Get ready.”
“Oh, I got one…” said the other end of the line.
Roenick began pulling something up on his cell phone as he continued speaking—
“I think the problem is that you haven’t been held accountable for your actions, Amanda. So, watch closely…”
Roenick handed her his cell phone. On the screen was a video feed from inside a van, focused on a crosswalk, near an intersection, just outside a pawnshop. A man was on the corner, dressed in black. Thick Ray-Ban’s covered his face, along with a trimmed red beard. A moment passed before a pair of humans entered frame – a woman, maybe early 30s. At her side was a six-year-old who looked like a miniature, carbon copy of the woman, a ruby sun dress on and a red bow in her hair, hand clutched tightly onto her mother’s. Both of them sported smiles that seemed to be permanently etched into their faces.
The man in black stopped them, his composure like that of someone who was lost and looking for directions. The sprightly woman seemed to be more than happy to oblige.
“That man’s name is O’Reilly,” said Roenick. “In ten seconds, he is going to execute that mother and her child, right on that sidewalk.”
Amanda felt all the air leave her legs and all the blood in her system rush to her gut. She clenched her toes like a hawk on a perch. It took a few moments for the words to find their way out of her mouth—
“Roenick…” she said. “Please...”
Roenick held up a finger. “Hold on, my dear. There is one more part to this.”
The thug to the left of Amanda handed her another cell phone with another video feed of a guy in a basement. On his knees. He looked bruised and bloody. His tank top and shorts were covered in dirt, straight lines of grime ran in a pattern across his clothing, like he had been dragged behind a car. He looked up and caught eyes with the camera recording him—
It was Daniel. Uncle Mousey.
“What is this?!” Amanda pleaded with exhausted breaths.
“I am going to make you choose,” Roenick began, “between this man’s life or the mother and her daughter.”
“Roenick—”
“Ten seconds, my dear.”
“Please, don—”
“Eight.”
“Help me!” Daniel screamed out.
“Choose, Amanda,” said Roenick. “Five seconds.”
She looked at the feed on Roenick’s cell phone and saw the man named O’Reilly reaching for something in the back of his waistband while the young mother looked up directions on her smartphone and her guiltless child smiled enthusiastically at life itself.
“Three,” said Roenick.
Amanda felt a choke in her throat. It moved into her ears and felt like crochet hooks were being shoved into them.
“Two,” said Roenick.
“Please!” pleaded Daniel.
The mother laughed.
The little girl smiled.
O’Reilly went to pull out his gun.
“One.”
“Kill Daniel!” Amanda shouted.
BANG!
A deafening, cannon-like sound reverberated from the basement video feed. Only Amanda flinched. Daniel (or the corpse with a bullet wound gushing blood that was formally known as Daniel) fell with a wet smack onto the floor, a pool of red gathering around his head and reflecting light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead.
One of the thugs called off O’Reilly through his radio just as Amanda shouted out her decision. She fell to the spacious floor of the limo, one hand bracing and steadying herself, as Roenick and the goon took back their phones.
“Please know,” Roenick said to Amanda, “that you’re the one that has put yourself in this position. Should you decide to act out again, I will be forced to put you through another one of these exercises.”
Roenick placed a finger under Amanda’s chin and tilted her head upward, forcing her to make eye contact. “Follow the rules. Do we understand each other?”
Amanda, through quiet and semi-stifled tears, nodded.
“There’s nowhere you can go, Amanda,” he said. “No place you can flee. I may not believe in God. But I do believe, in your world… I am God.”
Amanda looked square in Roenick’s eyes; his lethal and brutal spirit tormented her, his pupils cutting through her like glass as she felt herself being smothered by the black tar that was known as his soul.
“Very good,” said Roenick.
He looked at the goons.
“Take her to the house immediately.”
They nodded. Roenick exited the limo and stepped outside. Night had fallen. A red Mustang was to his right. His.
The Mustang and the limo were both resting on a cliff with a panoramic view that overlooked the entire Las Vegas strip and the corporately funded hub of human activity thriving in the harsh, unnatural topography. All the glam. All the sins. All the unforgiving elements.
One of the goons then got out of the limo, cell phone to his ear.
“We have a problem,” he said to Roenick.
“What is it?”
“Our guys at the club in Burbank didn’t make it after they cut Black loose. They’re dead…”
Roenick shook his head. Subtly.
“So no one is tailing him. Which means we’ve lost him. How splendid… Well, what happened?”
“It, uh… apparently the club… blew up.”
The last part caught Roenick’s attention. He looked over at the goon—
“How very peculiar…”
Martin Black needed to bum a smoke. He double-backed towards the section of smokers resting near the curb. All four of them were different shapes and sizes: a pair of European guys with backpacks and pearly-white smiles, an African American man in an expensive suit laughing into a cell phone, and a pretty redhead with sleeved tattoos so intricate that her skin was like a canvas showcasing a swirl of colors. Topping off her attire were ripped jean shorts and a silver streak in her red hair.
She looks nice enough.
Black approached her with the same smile an apartment renter would give his neighbor when both were caught in the unfortunate act of walking out of their houses at the same time.
“Hey. I’m really sorry but do you—”
The redhead had the cigarette out in a flash, accompanied with a smirk that had more effort than Black’s.
“You’re a life saver,�
�� he said as he popped the thing in his mouth.
The redhead pulled out a cheap, purple lighter, the kind made of see-through plastic, and ignited the tip.
“I’m helping you take a minute off your life,” she said with a smoky but still seductive tone. “I’m the worst person in the world.”
From the complexion of her skin, bass in her voice, and slight aging to her hypnotizing, hazel eyes, Black put her around the same age as himself.
“Where you headed?” she asked.
“I’m working, unfortunately,” Black responded.
“In LA?”
“As of now. You?”
“Same. Work. I thought I saw you going to one of the terminals.”
“I was about to head out of town but my employer felt it necessary that I tie up some loose ends.”
“That sucks.”
“It does. I like your hair, by the way,” said Black as he pointed to the silver streak running near the front part of her face.
“You dig it?” she asked as she blew it up with a corner-of-her-mouth exhale.
“I dig it. You look like one of the X-Men,” Black said as he breathed out a tiny plume of smoke.
“You going to take an Uber?”
“I don’t use any apps.”
“Ah. Old school, kind of guy.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Care to share a ride? I was about to leave.”
“Where you going?”
“To a bar.”
“You must’ve read my mind.”
“I’m not a day drinker, but I need it.”
“Same here.”
“Well… want to hitch a ride with me? You can kick back a couple bucks to me for the fare.”
“Usually I would say no, but I think at this point I might scream if I don’t get a little booze in my system.”
“I’m meeting some friends there. They’re kind of… well, I don’t know how to put it. They’re assholes, so they’re pretty picky with the people they meet. They might give you a hard time.”
“I’m just looking for a brew. One and done. I’ll probably call it quits after that.”