by Simon Wood
“I prefer to stand,” Josh said, remaining in front of Tyrell’s desk.
Bob had moved toward the chairs, but stopped
when Josh made his decision to stand. He took a step to one side and stood by the bookcases. “So will I,”
Bob said.
“As you prefer.” The courtesies over, Dexter Tyrell got down to business. He leaned back in his high
backed leather chair. “So, Mr. Deuce tells me you want to reverse your viatical settlement.”
“Yes, I do.” Josh fought the desire to launch himself over the desk and throttle Tyrell’s smug smile from his face.
“Well, I have given the subject great consideration since speaking to Bob and I have decided that it won’t be possible, Mr. Michaels.”
“What?”
“You see, we have made a substantial payment to
you and we have been paying your monthly dues over the last eighteen months. We’ve placed a significant investment in you and I personally would prefer to see a
return on that investment.”
“I can pay you your money back.”
Tyrell interlaced his fingers, brought them up to his lips and feigned contemplation. “No, Mr. Michaels. I think I’d prefer to collect. There’s no profit for Pinnacle Investments if we give your life policy back. We
aren’t a charity.”
The vice president’s sickly sweet manner was cloying.
It made Josh sick. He couldn’t stick to the plan any longer. He grabbed the chair back in front of him and sunk his fingers into the soft fabric. He wished it was Tyrell’s throat.
“Look here, you son of a bitch. Let’s cut the bullshit.
I know what you did. Your company was going to the wall because of this viatical shit.” Josh waved a dismissive hand in disgust for the viatical principle. “People stopped dying when you wanted them to, so you
started killing them. You sent a man to kill an old woman and me, and God knows how many others.
How many are there? How many have you killed?”
“Hold on, Josh,” Bob said. “This isn’t what we
agreed.”
“Not enough.” Tyrell replaced his business smile
with a hateful leer.
Tyrell’s candor amazed Josh. He’d just called Tyrell’s bluff and the man didn’t give a shit. Dexter Tyrell gave the impression he was bulletproof. What did the executive know that he didn’t?
“You bastard. What gives you the right to kill people for profit?”
Tyrell unlocked his fingers and pointed at Josh.
“You do. You and all the others like you, who coming rushing to this company, to me, and ask to be saved.
Those with AIDS who fucked one too many times
with the wrong John. The sick that are hoping for the miracle cure that will never come. And people like you, who rustle up a shit storm so big, only money can buy them out.
“But I solve all that for them. They just sign a piece of paper and all the bad stuff goes away. I grant them a second chance. The opportunity to live out their days in fine style until I decide they die.”
“Until you decide they die,” Josh said.
“Yes, me. And you wouldn’t believe how many are
willing to sign up.”
“You disgust me,” Josh said.
“Why? You’re all going to die anyway. It’s inevitable.
Once you’ve made a settlement, your life is no longer your own. It belongs to me and it’s my decision when it should end.”
“Oh, bullshit. People weren’t dying as quickly as you liked so you started wiping them out to balance the books.”
“Admit it, Josh, you don’t care about the other people, only about you. You’re pissed that your life has
caught up with you.”
“My wife and child are dead because of you.”
“No, your wife and child are dead because of you, Mr. Michaels. Your problems killed them.”
Josh went for Tyrell, throwing the chair aside and sending it crashing into the one next to it.
Suddenly, a bullet turned the corner of the desk blotter into confetti and a chunk of wood exploded from
the table, taking a pen with it.
Josh froze in his position.
Tyrell smiled.
“Josh, you should have played along,” Bob said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Dexter Tyrell’s grin broadened by the second. It was a winner’s smile. His cold eyes sparkled with delight.
Josh could see it, anybody could see it—he had lost to Tyrell. Josh shook his head in defeat and turned to his friend. Bob pointed John Kelso’s semiautomatic pistol at Josh. His fear evident, the gun trembled in Bob’s hand.
Not Bob, it can’t be Bob. How long has he been involved? He couldn’t believe his best friend had sold him out. When had Bob’s part started? When John Kelso turned up in California? Or had Bob known Josh had signed his own death warrant when he made the viatical settlement? No wonder Tyrell hadn’t looked concerned at Josh’s accusations; he already knew the game was rigged in his favor. A week ago, he would have hated Bob for his betrayal, but now, he had no more hate left.
He was prepared for the executioner’s bullet.
“Bob,” Josh said.
Bob swallowed hard. “Shut up, Josh. I’m not too
good with guns and I don’t want to shoot the wrong person.”
Josh braced himself for the next shot to rip through his brain. He didn’t fear his life ending; he welcomed it.
He couldn’t wait for that bullet to pierce his skull and end his misery. Josh had lost everything he held dear—
his wife and child burnt alive in their home, one friend murdered and the other a betrayer. All he had left was his life. Now the betrayer had him in his sights. It would be a fitting end for Josh—he’d done everything for the right reasons, even the bribe had been for the benefit of his daughter, but every decision he made had only wreaked more havoc.
Tyrell laughed. “Oh, dear, Mr. Michaels, you’re not a good judge of character. I bet you didn’t see this one coming. You’re always putting your trust in the wrong person.”
Josh ignored him. “Just do it, Bob, if you’re going to.”
“Josh, you don’t understand,” Bob pleaded.
“I don’t care why you did it. I just hope you were well paid,” Josh said, defeated.
“Don’t worry, Josh, Bob will be well looked after.
He knows when there’s a good offer on the table. I think that’s part of your problem. You don’t know a good opportunity when you see it. If you’d done the right thing and drowned in your car, just think of all the destruction that you would have saved your family and friends. A lot of people wouldn’t be dead, if you’d thought this through.”
“Just order it done, Tyrell. I don’t need to listen to your crap.”
“Oh, good God, no. You don’t think we’re going to kill you here, in my office? What do you take me for, an idiot? We’ll take you somewhere,” he said.
“I ” think you’re an idiot, Mr. Tyrell,” Bob said, the gun still aimed in the direction of the other two men in the office.
Bob’s remark knocked the smile off Tyrell’s face.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, Josh. I had to do it this way. He offered me a deal and I took it. It was the only way to get this close to the man. I was meant to come here to make a deal after you were killed, but I couldn’t let him do it.
Once I found you and you told me Kelso was dead, I made a change of plans. I told him I was bringing you here to get rid of you.”
Josh felt as confused as Tyrell. Bob’s rambling was going straight over his head.
“Kate and Abby aren’t dead,” Bob added. They’re alive? Josh heard the revelation, but it was too much for him. He buckled at the knees and slumped against Tyrell’s desk to catch his fall.
“What are you doing, Bob?” Fear and caution were
evident in Tyrel
l’s question.
Bob produced a small tape recorder from his pocket.
The spools were revolving and the record button was depressed. “It was the only way I could see us trapping him,” he said to Josh.
“You’re making a terrible mistake, Bob. Give me
that tape and we’ll forget all about this,” Tyrell commanded.
His hand edged toward the phone.
“Shut the fuck up before I shoot you.” Bob’s hand shook. If the gun went off, the bullet could go anywhere.
Like a gunslinger in a shootout, Tyrell reached for the telephone on his desk. Reacting to the draw, Bob instinctively aimed and fired. The bullet went wild. The vice president grabbed the handset. Bob fired again.
Tyrell screamed as the second bullet pierced his hand, splitting the handset in two. The receiver exploded and electrical sparks sizzled amongst the keys as they scattered like broken teeth. Tyrell clutched his bleeding
hand to his chest.
“Don’t make another fucking move.” Bob looked as
shaken as Tyrell did.
Tyrell whimpered and clutched his injured hand. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and bound it around his palm. Bob wasn’t taking any chances and kept the gun trained on Tyrell.
“Kate and Abby are alive?” Josh asked.
Bob’s eyes flicked from Tyrell to Josh and back to Tyrell. “Yeah. I made the deal with this son of a bitch and he told me Kelso was planning to blow up the
house. I got there before Kelso did and I got them out.
I know I should have told you when I caught up with you, but I needed you to help make a convincing story.
I’m sorry.”
Josh didn’t care about Bob not telling him. He
could be angry with his friend later. He wanted out of this place, as far as possible from Tyrell and his filthy company. He wanted to go home to his family and fix everything, put everything back the way it used to be. But then he remembered that life could never be the same, not now that Bell had told him about her disease.
“You
two won’t get away with this,” Tyrell said.
Sweat clinging to his forehead, Dexter Tyrell’s face was a mask of pain, but he didn’t feel the pain Josh felt.
Josh lunged for Tyrell in his chair. The vice president flinched, anticipating a beating. He turned his head away and raised his hands up to his face. His body collapsed into a fetal position. Josh held a fist above the executive’s head, ready to strike, but hesitated when he saw the picture on Tyrell’s desk.
Josh snatched up the framed photograph. It wasn’t a picture of his wife or a loved one, but the cover of some business magazine featuring Tyrell. Josh smashed the picture frame down on the corner of the desk. The frame shattered and pieces of glass and broken wood fell from Josh’s grasp. Josh dropped what was left of the frame. He picked up the largest of the pieces of broken glass and held it like a knife.
“Give me your arm,” Josh snarled.
“What?”
“Give me your fucking arm!” Josh barked.
Tyrell remained curled in a ball. He yelped like a wounded dog when Josh grabbed the man’s unwounded arm. He banged Tyrell’s left arm onto the
desk blotter.
Bob rushed forward. “What the hell are you doing, Josh? We have him. He’s finished.”
“Don’t come any closer, Bob.”
Bob did as he was told and looked on in fear.
Raising the shard of glass, Josh slashed it across Dexter Tyrell’s wrist. He yelped again. Blood filled the laceration and crimson poured down the sides of his arm onto the blotter.
“Don’t fucking move!” Josh bellowed at Tyrell.
Josh jammed his foot into the pit of the vice president’s stomach. He put his right arm on his right knee
and drew the makeshift knife across his own wrist.
“Josh,” Bob said.
Dropping the glass fragment, Josh took his foot out of Tyrell’s gut. He interlaced his fingers with Tyrell’s fingers so both cut wrists touched. The two men’s blood mixed. Josh pressed down on their wrists with his other hand, ensuring their blood mingled.
Tyrell looked on in disbelief. He fixed his gaze on Josh, then at the bizarre ritual being performed upon him. Slack-jawed, he said nothing.
“Good. We’re blood brothers, Tyrell.” Josh applied more pressure to their joined wounds. Blood oozed out from between their arms like jam squeezed from an overfilled sandwich. “I’m infected, Mr. Tyrell, and if luck is on my side, so are you.”
“Oh, my God.” Bob fell into one of Tyrell’s club
chairs.
“What have you done?” Tyrell demanded.
Josh enjoyed seeing the fear in Tyrell’s eyes.
“My blackmailer, my ex-mistress, murdered by your boy, told me one important fact before she died. She was diagnosed HIV positive.” Josh relished the moment.
The words HIV positive struck terror into all those who had contracted the virus and it was no different for Dexter Tyrell. Josh smiled at the fear in Tyrell’s eyes.
Tyrell fought Josh to wrench his arm free. Josh gripped tighter onto the vice president’s hand. He pressed down even harder onto Tyrell’s arm and head butted him, ending his struggle.
.; Tyrell yelped, and the blood drained from his face.
His resistance dissipated and Josh relinquished his grip on the vice president’s arm.
“Regardless of what happens to you or me, I have
the satisfaction of knowing your life is as uncertain as mine,” Josh said to Tyrell.
Dexter Tyrell stared at his wounded arm, then at
Josh. His panicked expression said it all. He was trying to comprehend what had happened to him and was
coming up short. Things like this happened to other people, not him.
Bob stared at the executive then, at his friend. “Oh, Josh.” “Call the police. Let’s finish this,” Josh said.
Bob started to say something, but let his thoughts die on his lips. He rested the pistol on the desk. He treated the weapon like it was made of glass. He wanted nothing to do with the gun anymore. He got up from the
chair and left the office.
Josh righted the chair he’d knocked over and sat
down on it. He picked up the pistol and took it out of harm’s reach, then sat back and waited for the police.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The commercials finished and a talk show took over.
The first half of the show would retrace Pinnacle Investments’s downfall and the second half would be an
open forum on the rights and wrongs of the viatical settlement system.
“Leave it alone. Don’t you people know when to
stop?” Josh said to the TV.
Josh reached across the couch for the remote and
switched the channel. He couldn’t bear to watch yet another show about the appalling truth he’d uncovered.
The subject had been done to death by the television networks, but they insisted on resurrecting the story.
He couldn’t go anywhere without seeing the word “viatical.”
It would be on cereal boxes next. He stopped
channel-hopping when he came to the cartoons. He
couldn’t see Tom and Jerry making a viatical settlement on Butch.
Cartoons. Thank God for cartoons. They were a
welcome distraction. He’d seen it all unfold on television.
The Sacramento Police Department had tracked
down John Kelso’s address book from the River City Inn. In the book, fifty-seven names and addresses were listed. All but one, Mark Keegan, were clients of Pinnacle Investments. All had been victims of unusual accidents that appeared to be have been choreographed
by John Kelso. Josh realized Kelso hadn’t gotten the chance to report his final victim’s name, Belinda Wong.
If the networks weren’t discussing John Kelso, they were discussing Dexter Tyrell. News programs show
ed stills of the successful executive from financial publications.
The images were a stark contrast to the broken
man the police paraded before the media. It looked like he had lost twenty pounds since his arrest. Dexter Tyrell never made it to court. On his way to his arraignment, in front of the television cameras, he broke
away from the police officer holding him and ran full pelt into the path of an oncoming bus. The executive was killed instantly. Josh watched Tyrell’s death on television. He saw a look of total bliss when the vice president saw the bus bearing down on him. Josh had never seen anyone happier.
Josh’s eyes registered the cartoon characters on the television, but his mind was elsewhere. The talk show forced him to relive recent events. The last two weeks since his return from Pinnacle Investments had been a blur. Police from two states, along with the FBI, quizzed him about the deaths of Mark Keegan, Margaret Macey, Joseph Henderson—aka Tom Jenks, Belinda
Wong and John Kelso. They also questioned him
about Dexter Tyrell and Pinnacle Investments’s involvement.
Josh held nothing back. There was no point
in lying any more. Once he started talking, nothing could stop him, and in less than two hours he’d said it all. It didn’t seem possible that the deaths and carnage could be explained away in a couple of hours. He
thought he’d left something out, but there’d been nothing. Of course, the cops kept him talking until his head swam. They hammered him for days, making him start from the beginning and dissecting the tiniest details.
The police released him after the first long day of interrogation.
He and Bob were flown home in the custody
of two police officers and were released on their own recognizance. Dexter Tyrell’s testimony and Bob’s tape recording had seen to that. The executive told the police everything. He explained how he’d hired a contract killer after selecting clients to kill. The name John Kelso was a surprise to Tyrell—Kelso had never told him his real name. Tyrell explained he had only dealt with a voice on a phone and a post office box.
Once the police had Dexter Tyrell, they were no
longer interested in Josh and Bob, although charges were still pending. But for revealing the murder-for profit scandal, it was their lawyer’s opinion the charges of intentionally wounding Tyrell would be dropped and the killing of John Kelso would be considered justifiable homicide. For all intents and purposes they