The Fever Dream

by Sam Jones

  “Is that so?” he said with delightful curiosity. “You sound like Roenick…”

  “I’m not going to sit still. When the time comes, and you drag me to whatever room, or place, where you plan on doing whatever it is you’re going to do to me, I’ll make sure I raise enough hell that the effort you had to exude to make me comply will have been far from worth it.”

  “Yer sitting still now, lass…”

  “Again,” she said as she picked up her now lukewarm water bottle, “biting my time.”

  O’Reilly walked in a circle around her, like a guest at a zoo who was marveling at a flamingo. “You’re not going to be the typical victim, are ya? Yer going to fight.”

  “As much as I can.”

  “That’s admirable.”

  “All you people have done is made me tougher. Stronger. When I survive this, I’ll be the better for it.”

  “Christ, ladies and gents! It’s Tony fucking Robbins!”

  O’Reilly gave her a slow, condescending clap of his hands. He got down on one knee and rested his hand on the arm of her chair.

  “The problem is ya think yer special. This isn’t the first time someone has said this to me, in this same type of situation. Every time it ends exactly the same.”

  “Hmm…” Amanda said, thinking about it.

  She then lowered her head, jerked it forward, and used the crown of her skull to smash O’Reilly’s bottom lip.

  He fell back, stumbled, laughed, and rebalanced himself. It was the laugh that got to Amanda, almost as if O’Reilly relished the pain.

  “Your breath smelled like shit. Sorry,” she said.

  O’Reilly reached two fingers to his lip and felt a warm, ruby ribbon dripping from a cut that definitely would require stitches. O’Reilly removed a blue handkerchief, dabbed away the blood from his lip, and licked the remnants off his fingers.

  “If you weren’t so important,” he said, “I’d break that pretty neck ‘o yers.”

  He moved towards her, tension in his footsteps. Amanda saw his fingers curl into a fist.

  She casually leaned back in her chair and placed her sunglasses on her face. She may have been chained to a corner, she may have had all her options and exits taken away, but hot damn if she wasn’t going to go out kicking and screaming.

  “Why don’t you go inside, get yourself a Guinness, and shut the fuck up?” she said.

  O’Reilly, again, roared with laughter.

  “Oh, I like you…”

  O’Reilly’s cell phone buzzed, an old flip-phone model. He folded it open and answered.

  “Yeah?”

  Whatever O’Reilly was told, it was brief. He hung up the phone as quickly as he had opened it.

  “Stay here, sweetheart. The mailman just arrived.”

  He squeezed her shoulder and turned towards the sliding door that led inside the house. Amanda shifted her weight and turned out of his touch.

  Slimy bastard…

  She caught O’Reilly smiling, as if he had just read her mind.

  He went to the front door and stood to the side, hand on his weapon. He called out for the knockers to identify themselves

  “Hudson and Willis,” they said.

  O’Reilly took his hand off his weapon, turned the knob, and swung the door open. Two men in green jumpsuits were there.

  Several crates the size of television sets were with them, along with an itinerary listing the contents of their cargo. Curiosity getting the better of her cat, Amanda stood up and approached the sliding glass door to take a closer peek.

  “What happened to you?” one of the guys in uniform asked, pointing to O’Reilly’s lip.

  “Don’t sweat it,” he told them as he glanced outside at Amanda. “We’re just roughhousin’ a bit.”

  O’Reilly looked over the list, nodding with a confirming ‘check’ of his head as he went over each item being delivered. He came to the bottom of the manifest, smiled, handed it back, stood to the side, and motioned for the delivery guys to take the boxes into one of the back rooms.

  Amanda opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside. She walked about three feet across the shag carpeting before asking—

  “What is that?”

  O’Reilly approached her, hands folded behind his back, some off-key imitation of Roenick being performed as the delivery guys took the crates towards the rear of the house.

  “Do ya read the bible?” he asked her.

  Amanda rolled her eyes. She had, at one point in her youth.

  But that was a different story.

  “What are you? Samuel L. Jackson?” she asked.

  “I’m serious,” O’Reilly said.

  She sighed and replied: “Once or twice.”

  “Luke 9:24.”

  Amanda crossed her arms.

  Don’t recall it.

  O’Reilly exhaled through his mouth as he dabbed at his lip with a handkerchief, silently reacting to thoughts of Amanda’s fate that she had yet to discover herself.

  “Come back outside and take a swim, lass…”

  He waited, eyes still on her, as Amanda stayed planted for a few moments; the gears in her head spinning beyond control.

  Luke 9:24.

  Amanda looked to the kitchen and became eager to check the drawers for a spare knife or fork that someone forgot to remove. She put it on her list of Things To Do once O’Reilly had his back turned.

  Martin Black was a half hour from Vegas. The car Stan Hope had loaned him was a more recent blue model sedan, an under the radar, suburban vehicle. Gas efficient. Did a decent job at ventilating the desert heat that Black felt radiating from the driver’s side window. From the second Black saw the car, he knew it must have been stolen, re-vinned, and re-plated by Stan Hope and one of his little buddies. Stan was sure as shit drunk when he was doing it, too.

  I love that guy.

  Black could see a few speckles of light off in the distance that was the strip. The closer he came to the outskirts of it, the more he felt the circus in his head reaching an intolerable precipice. Self-doubt and loathing were the frontrunner emotions leading the show.

  Everything was a mile off from calculated and cool.

  This is so fucked.

  What if I find nothing in Vegas?

  It’s my only option. I have to check.

  And if I do find something and mess up the follow through?

  I need that money.

  I need that CW.

  Part of him felt like it was the lack of smoking. Between having his legs up for a few days, and the three hours in the car, he hadn’t once lit up. His body craved nicotine, a quick swell of it invading his bloodstream, a tiny fix to center his mind.

  His snowballing sense of self-pity threw his thoughts back to his very first gig. It was a Tier Five contract taken out by a Philadelphia mob boss. The job was simple: taking down an armored car. Black took the lead on a three-man team, one of which was a fellow Trust member by the name of Talia Ruby. It was a broad daylight attack that was completed with AR-15 assault rifles, clown masks, and military precision. One million was in the takeaway. Black and Talia walked away with sixty thousand of it. It was a cushy gig with a two-day turnaround time, including prep and execution. Black completed the contract with flying colors and a big ‘thank you’ from the Philly mob guy.

  That was a Tier Five assignment.

  I’ve now botched a Tier Four assignment, and I’m on the cusp on botching a Tier One.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I’ve been trained in the art of killing someone with a pen all the way up to demolishing a building.

  Am I unlucky?

  Am I cursed?

  Is Trask screwing with my head?

  I wonder if I’ll cross paths with Cassie again.

  She’s an interesting cat…

  His eyes wandered toward the desert outside the car, the stretch of black road he was on cut defiantly through the brown and tan sands of nothingness. If Vegas were hell, this freeway w
as the River Styx. One complimented the other.

  Without the CW, I am nothing.

  Without The Trust, I am nothing.

  Who am I?

  Cut the shit.

  You’re a Contractor.

  The elite.

  Best of the best.

  You ‘aint no Marcus Silver.

  Black switched on the radio and drowned his mental ramblings with Stevie Wonder. After driving another thirty miles, sunshine reflected off the glass of towering structures in this distance and hit Black in the eyes. His spine shivered like a pistol and fired off to signal the beginning of a race.

  Black slowed as a Nevada Highway Patrol cruiser passed him. For a moment, he felt like the officer had been looking at him.

  Black then crawled his way into the city. The high-rising monstrosities with glittering letters became all the more looming the closer he crept up on them. A few miles out, he began passing billboards—

  Second rate/disgraced comedians performing at the MGM.

  A Cirque De Solei show set to the theme of The Beatles.

  A buffet open 24/7 on Freemont Street.

  Freemont Street.

  Gross…

  Five more minutes passed and Black had officially injected himself into the city.

  The further along the strip he drove, the more corporate the layout became—

  The MGM, which at one point must have been showy, had become a horribly unattractive destination when newer establishments rose around it.

  A thirty-floor, silver eyesore with red trim called the Oasis was shaped to look like some type of Arabian sword. Settled on the east side of the strip, it was currently holding some kind of ongoing pool party on the rooftop. A digital screen across the front of the building said ‘The Lunar Club Pool Party with DJ Atler,’ complete with an overly photoshopped picture of a big-chinned buffoon with a headset around his neck and a fedora on his head, resting above his hazel, soulless eyes.

  Farther down the road was the upscale Cosmopolitan, a black and blue building that looked like an electric razor and hosted what seemed to be the new, trending theme of Vegas: pool parties. They were cramped, over-heated, and alpha male-driven to the point of choking on testosterone upon arrival.

  There was a casino made to look like Paris, France, complete with a replica of the Eiffel Tower and an oddly hypnotizing electric balloon made of neon out in front.

  From Black’s point of view, after a certain amount of exposure to the city, everything seemed like it had become fused into one, giant piece of twisted architecture. In a way, it was. Las Vegas was built in a fashion that catered to the inebriated. It was essentially a bloated, steroid injected outdoor shopping mall fueled by Jägermeister and false hope in the form of slot machines.

  And those overpriced yardstick drinks.

  It was a destination that was laid out in a way that you could never get lost. Instead, should you be going in the wrong direction, you would end up wandering into another establishment ready to plow more liquor into you, they’d turn you around, you’d wander, get lost again, and just drink some more.

  Two days of that is more than enough.

  For Black, there was no need to overly glamorize or detail a town that validated all-day drinking, higher-priced cigarettes, and a low-tolerance policy on marijuana.

  Fuck Vegas.

  Then something caught his attention as he stared loathsomely out the window: the distance between the Paris Las Vegas and Bally’s, a not-so-noteworthy and slightly less posh hotel shaped like an ‘L.’

  He looked at each building, left-to-right, left-to-right. Something began to stew in his mind as he roughly calculated the distance in yards between the top level, east side rooms at the Paris and the northern ones over at Bally’s.

  I think I have an idea…

  Black checked in at the Paris Las Vegas. He asked the concierge for a room on floor twenty or higher. After some pleasant but forced social graces, and the concierge’s lightning-quick reflexes on the computer, Black lucked out on a simple room with a queen-sized bed on the twenty-second floor. He booked the reservation under the name on the gift card that Stan had left him: ‘Larry Zito.’

  Much obliged, buddy.

  Black went to the room, checked the floor, and got a layout of the entire surrounding area – Exits, stairwells, et cetera. He lingered around gathering intel for about six minutes. Satisfied, he got in the elevator, went to the ground floor, walked over to the Bally’s, and booked another room for himself on twenty-fourth floor of their establishment. This time he asked that the reservation, though still under Mister Zito’s card, be put under the name Martin Black.

  “Mister Zito is my employer,” Black explained to the lady with the sandy hair at the check-in counter. “He’s paying for this trip but some friends are coming here to meet me later, so I want them to know I’m staying in the room. You know, just in case someone asks for Martin Black, and it says Larry on the reservation.”

  “Not a problem!”

  Too easy.

  The same routine followed with his residence at Bally’s: gathering the layout, spotting the exits, locating the cameras. He made it a point to do it twice, being that his recent missteps caused him to call his own judgment and memory into question.

  He also made it a point to take the complimentary toothbrush and toothpaste from his room before indulging his ivories with a quick scrubbing.

  Then he called Stan Hope and asked him how long it would take to get a sniper rifle to Las Vegas.

  When Stan asked him if he needed anything else, Black requested an MP3 player filled with the greatest hits of The Spinners and the loudest portable speakers that Stan could find.

  Cassie walked alongside Roenick. The two of them were on the outskirts of the compound where Amanda was being held, nothing but desert and sand around them, caking up her boots and dusting up his expensive clothing, though he didn’t seem to mind.

  For the first few minutes Cassie felt a tug in her stomach, an anticipatory feeling that Roenick was leading her into a situation that mimicked the customs of the old Cosa Nostra bosses when they drove a hapless prick out to the middle of nowhere and then tossed a shovel at his feet. Every gust of wind and every twitch that occurred amongst the shrubbery felt like a potential threat to Cassie.

  Stay frosty.

  You’re not going to die out here.

  They were walking away from the house, the sun on Cassie’s back attempting to set her jacket on fire. She figured it to be around 104 degrees, give or take. From the second she stepped outside, she felt that instantaneous burn on the back of her neck and a line of sweat forming between her breasts.

  Roenick had on a pair of blue-tinted shades, his eyes, for once, concealed. Cassie found it a nice change of pace. Looking into them tended to be an overwhelming task.

  “How was Portugal?” Roenick asked her.

  Roenick was quite consistent when it came to his behavior and demeanor, but there was enough of a shift in his voice that it made the question feel slightly more casual.

  “It was fine,” Cassie said, the bandage around her cracked nose once again itching. She placed her hands behind her back to refrain from touching it, not wanting to show any sign of weakness.

  “I was worried it would interfere with our work out here,” said Roenick, “but you made it back with swift timing. I almost didn’t allow you to take the job. I’m glad that I did.”

  You don’t own me.

  Dick.

  “A job is just a job,” she said to Roenick. “I’m not dwelling on it.”

  “Please. You were happy to be out of my company, if only for a few days.”

  True.

  Cassie was proud of the Portugal job. And, like Martin Black, she was stunned that she had followed up a success with what she considered to be such a downright fuck-up. In this case, failing to capture Black and subsequently letting him get away.

  Roenick stopped walking. Cassie stopped walking. They both faced one anot
her.

  “I want to apologize for striking you,” he said. “I guess you could say I’ve reached what some would call their ‘boiling point.’”

  Cassie poked her tongue against her cheek in an attempt to dam up the string of profanities she wanted to sling at Roenick. Instead, she calmed herself, breathed, and then replied—

  “Don’t sweat it. Siblings are supposed to roughhouse with one another.”

  Roenick smiled. “I could not have asked for a better baby sister.”

  He went to kiss her cheek. She could smell the forced emotion oozing out of him and decked out of the way.

  “What are we doing out here, Roenick?”

  He began mulling over his words with the utmost scrutiny before allowing them to slip out of his mouth. “You’re well aware of why Amanda Dubin is in our possession, yes?” he asked.

  Cassie turned pale. The end goal of their mission was a dire thought that she had squashed into the pit of her stomach whenever it crept into her mind.

  Right now, it was unavoidable.

  “I need no reminders. I’m well aware of what’s going to happen,” Cassie responded. Professional.

  “Then you know as well as I do that the notion of what we’re about to embark on, what I’m about to endure, is a quite the burden to bear—

  Bullshit.

  “However,” he said, “at the end of the day—“

  Roenick placed a hand on his chest. It felt like some sort of self-salute to Cassie, a self-appeasing, educated smirk on his face to go along with it.

  “Fear is an enemy that has defeated even the strongest of men,” he said as he patted himself.

  How humble…

  Cassie turned away from Roenick and focused on a rust-colored lizard scurrying in the distance with apprehensive footing from bush to bush, limiting his exposure in the sun for fear of any surrounding predators.

  “You’re not having second thoughts about this?” Roenick asked her. “Are you? It’s understandable, considering the circumstances.”