by Simon Wood
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Josh stared into the burning wreckage of his home.
Bob looked at the gun, then at Josh. He jammed the gun in the waistband of his pants against the small of his back and said, “You don’t need this, you don’t need this at all.”
“They’re dead, Bob,” Josh said.
Bob grabbed Josh, digging his fingers into Josh’s T-shirt, handfuls of material in his fists. “Yes, but you’re alive and that’s what matters now. Pinnacle Investments will sell you your life back.”
“None of that matters anymore. It’s not important.”
Josh was dead inside; his words lacked emotion.
“God damn you, Josh. This isn’t going to be for
nothing. Kate and Abby aren’t going to die in vain.”
Taking the lead, Bob took Josh sternly, one hand on his arm and the other on his back, and ushered him into his Toyota. Bob ran around to the other side of the car, removed the pistol from his waistband and climbed in.
The onlookers’ flickering faces watched the sedan roar off into the night.
Bob raced through the suburban streets just as Josh had twice that night. Jumping red lights and running stop signals, he only heeded the rules of the road when three fire engines raced across a four-way stop bound for Josh’s burning house.
Inside the car the mood was tense. Except for the whine of the thrashing engine and Bob’s mumbled
curses to other road users, silence filled the car. Josh’s silence disturbed Bob. He snatched glances at his friend’s catatonic state.
Bob snapped his fingers in front of Josh’s face.
“Come on, Josh. I need you with me.”
Josh acknowledged Bob’s presence and looked at his anxious friend.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you,” Bob said.
“I got home and Kate wouldn’t let me in. She’d
found out about Bell.”
“How?”
“Bell told her in the mall.”
“What a bitch,” Bob said.
“I had it out with Bell and someone slugged me.
When I came around, she had a knife in her chest. This is her blood.” Josh held out his hands for Bob to see.
“Is she dead?”
“Yes. John Kelso killed her.”
“Who?”
“James Mitchell—it’s his real name. He was going to kill me and make it look like a revenge killing.”
“Jesus Christ.” Bob struggled to comprehend the
facts. These weren’t the happenings of the average Joe living his life. Everyday life, if they ever got back to it, would never be the same. “So all the shit that’s been stirred up with Bell was an act to get you two linked up for a murder-suicide?”
“Not at the beginning. She came back for me, but
Kelso saw an opportunity and twisted her to his will.
She was just his puppet.”
“Where’s Kelso?”
“He’s dead. I shot him. You’ve got his gun.”
The more Josh spoke of recent traumatic events, the more he became himself. His despair evaporated and life returned to his voice. It couldn’t be said that he was back to normal. Normal was a lifetime ago.
Josh was silent again. Lost in his thoughts, he relived his escapes from death and the losses that night. He’d survived again, but those close to him hadn’t. It was hard to accept his survival. A tear ran down his cheek.
“Bell had AIDS,” Josh said matter-of-factly.
Bob teetered on the brink of saying something, but didn’t. Josh’s life was too much for him to comment on.
Untidily, Bob swung the Toyota into a parking space.
The parking lot was relatively empty, with only a few cars in the spaces. There would be no one to complain about Bob’s bad parking for a while.
Josh stared at the illuminated sign belonging to Sacramento Executive Airport. “What are we doing here?”
“There’s a plane waiting for us, my friend. It’s about time we straightened this out.”
The men crossed the parking lot and entered the
lobby. The small airport was busy. Josh always heard light and small commercial aircraft flying over his home at all hours of the day. He knew the airport’s layout well, having landed there on several occasions.
After a short flight of stairs, a bored looking man in a pilot’s uniform sitting in the airport’s lounge greeted Josh and Bob. He was younger than Josh, no more than thirty, a young pilot earning his hours in order to be picked up by one of the big commercial airlines. He got up and approached them.
“Josh Michaels and Bob Deuce?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” Bob said.
The pilot’s gaze fell on Josh. The younger man stared in amazement at Josh’s condition. His appearance
could be best described as disturbing. Blood stained the knees of his jeans and continued down his shins. Cuts and bruises paraded themselves across his face and arms. The smell of smoke permeated the air like Josh had spent a weekend next to a campfire.
“Are you from Pinnacle Investments?” Bob asked to distract the pilot.
“Er, sorry. Yes. I’m here to fly you to Seattle. My name is Martin Trent and I am your copilot. We’re all ready for you. So if you’re ready, we can take off immediately.”
Josh nodded in agreement.
Trent led the way out of the foyer and onto the
apron, where a number of aircraft were parked. Aircraft noise replaced the echoing hollowness of the airport lounge. A Navajo touched down on the asphalt.
“I was expecting you earlier,” Trent said over the din of a turboprop carrying out its checks at the holding point.
“I know, but my friend had an accident,” Bob said.
Josh became conscious of his physical condition and apparel. He looked distinctly conspicuous in his soiled clothes, and his muscles reported their discomfort. “I was wondering, do you have any spare clothes on
board that I could borrow?”
Relief at the plausible explanation was obvious on Trent’s face. “I’ve probably got something in an overnight bag you could use.”
“Thanks.”
Trent led Josh and Bob to a waiting Lear jet. The three climbed into the cramped confinement of the executive plane. All three hunched instinctively upon embarking.
The young copilot closed and secured the door.
“Okay, gentlemen, if you can buckle yourselves in, we’ll be taking off very soon. And Mr. Michaels, once we’re at cruising altitude I’ll get you those clothes. Oh, and there is a bathroom if you want to clean up.”
Trent flashed an airline smile and disappeared into the cockpit.
Josh and Bob took seats toward the rear of the aircraft in one of the twelve first-class seats. Normally this level of luxury would have excited Josh, but the knowledge he was onboard a jet taking him to Pinnacle Investments filled him with disgust.
“Why are we going to Pinnacle Investments, Bob?”
“That’s why I’ve been looking for you. I’ve gotten them to sell you your policy back. It’s over, Josh.” Bob placed a heavy hand on Josh’s shoulder.
Slowly building in speed, the engines whined.
“Fuck you, Bob. My family is dead. Four other people are dead because of this insurance policy. It’s not going to put things right. It’s not going to bring Kate and Abby back.” Josh seethed. It had gone far beyond just getting the hit man off his back. He wasn’t about to let Pinnacle Investments off the hook. He needed someone to pay for killing his family.
“Trust me, Josh. We have nothing on these people.
We go to the cops once more and we’re screwed.
They’ve probably got enough on you to put you away for life. You have the blood of a murdered woman on your clothes and your fingerprints on the gun that killed a man. No, I can’t bring your wife and child back, but I can stop the killing. It’s the best I can do.”
Trent’s
professional voice broke in through the intercom.
Josh and Bob both stared at the closed door of the cockpit.
“Gentlemen, we’ve started engines and should be departing in approximately ten minutes. Flight time
should be one hour and forty-five minutes. As I said, I’ll return to you once we are airborne. Thank you for listening,”
he said.
“What am I meant to do afterward, Bob? Once I’ve
bought my life back.”
Bob frowned. “Start again. Disappear somewhere.
Get away from all this shit.”
Josh looked away, out of the aircraft window into the darkness.
The engines rose in pitch and the aircraft trundled forward. The Lear jet rolled to the holding point, paused and finally taxied onto the runway. The plane roared down the runway and lifted into the night.
Once the plane reached cruising altitude, Martin
Trent came back to the passenger area as promised. He grabbed a duffle from a storage locker and removed a pair of jeans and a shirt for Josh. He showed both men where refreshments were kept.
Josh excused himself and squeezed into the bathroom.
He removed his T-shirt and washed himself in
the small stainless steel sink. He stared at himself in the mirror. He looked at the puffy bruising on his face and his singed hair. Lipstick colored bruises covered his chest and soot streaked his face. He looked like he’d been engaged in combat. Had it all been worth it? Was his survival worth the lives of his friends and family? It would be, if he lived their lives as well.
He finished washing by dunking his head into the
soapy, clouded water, soaking it for a moment, trying to wash the bad images from his mind. Water slopped out of the sink, splashing his jeans and feet. A watery, bloody pool formed on the rubber matted floor. He dried his hair with a towel and combed it into position with his fingers. He wasn’t pretty, but presentable.
Josh came out of the bathroom with his T-shirt in his hand. His bloody footprints were lost in the dark blue carpeting. Bob spoke on the onboard telephone. Trent was gone. Josh stripped out of his jeans and slipped into the young man’s clothes. The shirt fit fine, but the jeans were too tight in the waist and an inch too short in the leg. He would make do.
“Okay, Mr. Tyrell,” Bob said and hung up the
phone.
“Who’s that?”
“Dexter Tyrell. He’s the VP in charge of viatical settlements.”
“Are we meeting him?” Josh asked.
Bob nodded. “Do you want a drink?”
“Not if it’s paid for by Pinnacle Investments.”
Crashing into another of the ample seats, Josh tilted it back and swiftly fell into a deep sleep. Although deep, the sleep wasn’t peaceful. Images of Kate and Abby haunted him—their bodies ravaged by flames in the wreckage of their house, their clothes seared away, calling out to him while he watched them burn. Josh tried to help, but he was frozen to the spot. The conflagration took hold of their bodies and they melted into
the flames, although their dying screams didn’t. A fist struck him and he found himself pinned to the ground by a bullet-ridden John Kelso as Bell fired a gun into Josh’s limbs. As Bell fired a final round into his head, Josh found himself at the controls of the crippled Cessna with Mark Keegan. Keegan screamed obscenities and accused Josh of betraying him as Josh uselessly fought with the disobedient controls.
The jet touched down onto the runway, jerking Josh awake. He inhaled and rubbed his face. A thin veneer of sweat coated his body. He tilted the seat upright and stared out the window. An unknown landscape rushed past. The Lear jet shuddered to a stop before it taxied over to the apron.
“I thought I’d let you sleep,” Bob said.
“What time is it?”
“It’s eleven-fifteen.” Bob paused. “Are you ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Josh thanked Trent for the clothes as they disembarked.
He promised to give them back on the return flight.
The airport was small. Not a soul wandered the terminal.
As they stepped out of the airport, the Pacific
Northwest chill bit into Josh. A taxi fired its engine and the lights came on. The sedan pulled up in front of Josh and Bob. The front passenger window retracted and the driver leaned over to address them.
“Bob Deuce?” the cabby asked.
“Yeah,” Bob said and got in.
“Pinnacle Investments, right?” the cabby asked.
The cabby was a white-haired man in his sixties. He looked like he’d been driving a taxi since he was a kid.
He hunched over the wheel with what seemed to be a permanent stoop. It looked doubtful he could stand upright.
He glanced back at his two passengers in the
rearview mirror.
“Yeah, as quick as you can,” Bob said.
“No hotel then?”
“No,” Bob said.
“Business is it?”
“Yeah,” Bob said.
“You must be pretty important people to be flown in at this hour for a business meeting. What’s the emergency?”
“That’s our business,” Josh said.
The cabby held Josh’s stare in the mirror, his old face wrinkled into a sneer. He mumbled a curse under his breath. He didn’t speak for the rest of the journey.
There was silence except for the occasional crackle from the CB radio transmissions.
The taxi pulled off the highway into a wooded area that swiftly opened up into a secluded business park. A portion of the woodland had been harvested to house three clinical-looking tinted glass and brick blocks.
Each three-story building was a clone of the other two, but each had different corporate logos glued to the outside.
Pinnacle Investments occupied the center building.
Floodlit parking lots capable of holding several
hundred cars surrounded each building. A few minutes before the witching hour on a Saturday night, the parking lots were bare.
The cab stopped in front of Pinnacle Investments’s reception with a squeak from the brakes. Bob reached for his wallet, but the disgruntled cabby shut him down with a raised hand.
“The tab’s been picked up by this place,” he said sharply as he flicked his head in the direction of Pinnacle Investments’s building. “They paid more than enough.”
Bob stuck his wallet back into his pocket and he and Josh opened the rear passenger doors. They started to get out of the car, but the cabby interrupted them.
“Do you want me to wait?”
“No, you can go,” Bob said.
The cabby nodded curtly. He barely waited for Josh and Bob to close the doors before he tore off into the night.
The two men walked up the concrete steps past the manicured landscaping. The lights in the reception illuminated the area from behind the darkened glass. Two
security men manning the reception desk watched
them approach the front doors.
One security guard, a streetwise looking black man in his mid-thirties, got up from his seat and met Josh and Bob at the doors. He looked as if he had experienced a few unorthodox events in his life. They waited
for a moment while the guard opened the door and
poked his head through, his face a question mark.
“Dexter Tyrell is expecting us,” Bob said.
“Your names, please?”
“Bob Deuce and Josh Michaels,” Bob said.
The guard opened one of the glass doors wide and
Josh and Bob entered. He locked the doors after them.
The guard went back to the reception desk. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
The other guard, an overweight white man a good ten years older than his coworker, looked up from his magazine and nodded an acknowledgment to the visitors.
Josh and Bob nodded back.
The black guard picked up a phone fro
m the switchboard and dialed a number. After a moment his call
was answered.
“Mr. Tyrell, I have those gentlemen you were expecting.”
The guard paused and listened to the response.
“I’ll send them up, sir. Thank you.”
The guard put the phone down and pointed in the direction of the elevators. “If you would like to take the
elevator to the third floor, Mr. Tyrell will be waiting for you.”
Josh and Bob did as they were told. Josh pressed the button for the elevator and they got in.
“Right, Josh, we’re here. Play it cool. We may know what he has done, but we have no proof. I want to get out of here in the shortest period of time possible and still be alive. Remember what this guy is capable of, okay?”
Josh pursed his lips and nodded.
Bob grabbed Josh’s arm. “You’re with me on this, right?”
Josh shook Bob’s arm off. “I know exactly where we stand,” he said, sharply.
The imitation bronze elevator doors, polished to reflect a distorted image of the occupants, opened. Dexter Tyrell stood on the other side to meet them. He looked as if he’d just stepped off the nineteenth hole. He flashed a shark’s smile and welcomed them into his lair.
Tyrell ushered the two men off the elevator car.
“Welcome, gentlemen, do come this way.”
Tyrell led them along the thick pile-carpeted corridor and directed them into his office.
Josh’s hatred for Dexter Tyrell boiled inside. Up until then, he’d sunk into a pit of self-pity and self
reproach for his own actions. But now, he was
face-to-face with the devil himself, the man who had ordered his death. This monster would be sorry for what he’d done. Josh didn’t care what Bob said. Tyrell wouldn’t be allowed to escape scot-free. His family was dead because of this man’s command.
“I hope the arrangements were satisfactory to you both.” Tyrell followed them into his office.
Bob turned to Tyrell. “Yeah, great. A nice way to travel. Private jet, I mean.”
Josh nodded his agreement.
“Yes, it’s a charter firm we use now and then. A reliable outfit.” Tyrell took a seat at his desk. He gestured to the leather club chairs in front of him. “Please, take a seat.”