Concrete Underground

by Moxie Mezcal

  My face instinctively twisted into a sneer, but actually his blow was just the thing I needed to jolt me out of the emo self-pity-party I was slipping into. I turned back to Max and asked, "Where's Columbine?"

  "She's fine – she's waiting outside. She explained what happened, how you were digging up the dead body that you thought was Lily." He paused, then added, "It's not, incidentally. That was just a routine chore I asked Saint Anthony to handle for me, nothing to do with your assignment."

  "Wait, what?" I said, and pulled out my notebook as if I had somehow missed something. "So you're the one who set up that whole meeting? Does that mean the guy who drives that old blue Chevy works for you, too?"

  There was no hint of recognition in Max's face as he shook his head. "What blue Chevy?"

  "The guy who drove McPherson out to meet Anthony at the graves."

  Max looked at me silently with no reaction, his face remaining completely stoic and unchanged. And yet, there was something palpably different, possibly a nearly-imperceptible stiffening of his posture, or maybe even just a darkening of his aura, and I knew that he was both surprised by what I said and not a bit pleased.

  Apparently, Columbine hadn't been completely forthcoming with her account to him.

  "You didn't know McPherson was out there while Anthony buried them," I crowed triumphantly.

  I stared at Max, hoping for some kind of reaction, some flicker of frustration or anger to validate the fact that I'd finally been one step ahead of him for a change.

  Suddenly, though, my vision started to blur, and I felt dizzy and light-headed. I reached out to brace myself against the back of the nearby chair, but my weight made it topple backwards, collapsing me to the ground. Max bent over to help me up, his stone visage finally cracked into a broad grin.

  "I told you not to take so many of those pills."

  * * *

  21. The Existential Hitman

  Max and I staggered clumsily into the main lobby of the Asterion building like a pair of doped-up conjoined twins, my left arm slung over his shoulders, his right arm wrapped tightly around my midsection, and our four legs tripping and tangling over each other.

  Columbine and Saint Anthony were waiting to meet us. Anthony rushed over to help with his boss's burden, gripping me roughly and letting me slump my weight against his sturdy frame.

  "What the hell's wrong with him?" Anthony asked.

  Max mimed popping pills into his mouth.

  Columbine also came over to join us, unable to hide her shock at seeing my face.

  "I know," I slurred. "I look totally hardcore."

  Columbine offered a weak smirk that nearly avoided looking patronizing. "No, you look like you got your ass kicked. Hardcore would be if the other guy looked like that."

  Max leaned in to Anthony and softly said, "I need to talk to you."

  They propped me up against the reception desk and walked off to speak privately in hushed tones.

  I craned my neck to look around the rest of the lobby, which was basically a cavernous, unadorned concrete bunker. The large open space off to one side suggested it had been intended as a waiting area, but there were no tables or chairs of any kind. In fact, the only furniture at all was the tall reception desk that I was currently leaning on.

  Behind it sat an elderly woman, presumably the receptionist, passing the time by knitting with blue yarn. She never once bothered to look up from her work to acknowledge our presence, and I wasn't entirely convinced she was even aware that we were there.

  The wall behind her was covered with a large bank of small closed circuit TV monitors. It reminded me somewhat of the setup at the Labyrinthine party, but much larger. The images on the screens appeared to be feeds from surveillance cameras throughout the storage facility, and each one had a five-digit number displayed at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

  The images changed to a new feed every thirty seconds, and the sequence of the feeds was completely random and not related the the numeric identifiers.

  "What do you think they're talking about?" asked Columbine.

  "Huh?" I said, pulling myself away from the videos. I followed her gaze over to Max and Anthony. "Oh, well I let slip that your father was out there when Anthony was burying those bodies, so I imagine the 'Saint' has some explaining to do."

  The two men suddenly broke into laughter and Max patted Anthony's shoulder affectionately before they started back to us.

  "Oh yeah, you can tell how much trouble he's in," Columbine added sarcastically.

  I was about to say something snappy back, but my attention was drawn away by a video appearing on one of the screens. It showed a man sitting on the edge of a bed in a small, empty room. The image was washed in blue, and the number on the bottom of the screen read: 00033.

  "How're you feeling, still dizzy?" Max asked as he slid in next to me against the desk.

  "Those numbers on the screen..." I asked, "do they correspond to the numbers of storage units here?"

  Max looked over the monitors and nodded.

  "Then what's in that one, number 00033?" I asked and pointed out the screen where I'd seen the blue room, but it had already changed over to a different feed.

  Max and Anthony exchanged a couple of looks that could only be described as significant.

  "Anthony, would you mind giving our friend a ride home, since he's obviously in no condition to drive himself?"

  Anthony nodded at his boss's request, then hooked a large meaty arm around me and dragged me along as the four of us exited the lobby.

  There were two cars parked outside – the Porsche and Max's limo. Max took Columbine's arm and led her to his car, where the driver was waiting with the door already open. She looked hesitantly from Max to me, but even though Max was just grinning pleasantly, there was something in his eyes that told her this wasn't up for debate. So she got in.

  Meanwhile, Anthony tossed me into the Porsche's passenger seat like a sack of laundry, then circled around to get in on the driver's side.

  "You're not in any particular hurry to get home, are you?" he asked while firing up the engine.

  I shook my head weakly, the motion causing tracers to blur across my vision, and I felt a distinctly unsettling sense of déjà vu.

  ---

  I slumped back into the blood red vinyl couch and let my head fall over to one side, then felt a profound sense of relief as the darkness closed in on me.

  SNAP!

  I jerked my head up and opened my eyes to find Anthony's hand hovering inches from my face, his thick meaty fingertips snapping together angrily.

  "Keep your eyes on the prize, D," he admonished and pointed his middle and index fingers at his own eyes, then rotated his hand so that they pointed at the blonde straddling my lap.

  "And watch that you don't spill your drink, man. You've been milking that same fucking glass for the last hour. Just cowboy up and pound the sumbitch."

  I looked down and saw that I was in fact holding a glass in danger of tipping out of my hand and spilling both scotch and mostly-melted-rocks all over the vinyl couch.

  I snapped my head back and downed the last watered-down dregs from it.

  "Oh good, your hands are free," said the blonde, who was wearing a white dress like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. She climbed off of me and turned around, then unfastened the halter of her dress, allowing the top half of it to fall loosely down to her waist. As she sat back down on my lap, grinding her ass against the hard bulge straining through my pants, she simultaneously grabbed both of my hands and lifted them up to cup her breasts, which somehow managed to feel even less natural than her dye-job looked. I gave it a fifty-fifty shot, however, that the Marilyn-esque mole on her left cheek was actually for real.

  Anthony leaned back with a satisfied smirk, checked his watch, and then flagged down a passing cocktail waitress to order another round.

  This place Anthony had brought me to used to be a Chinese restaurant about a half-mile away from the
city's main airport, tucked away among the over-priced business hotels. The restaurant itself was shut down due to repeated health code violations, and the building had stayed boarded up with no new tenants ever since. At least that was how it looked on paper.

  However, if you went around to the back after a certain time of night and knocked on what used to be the kitchen delivery door with a specific pattern of knocks, you'd find out that it had in fact been turned into some unholy triangulation of a strip club, a speakeasy, and a brothel.

  Apparently, Max got the idea to take over the vacant space when the city council voted to ban alcohol from being served at all the legit strip clubs. This resulted in the twin atrocities of dry strip clubs and "bikini bars". Those in turn drove any self-respecting business traveler, stag party, or standard-issue pervert into Max's unregulated underground club. The fact that an anti-vice statute inspired him to create a place where a lap dance can end in full emission satisfied his twisted sense of humor to no end, I'm sure.

  What I wasn't so sure about was why Anthony dragged me here in the first place, since all he'd done since we arrived was pound shots, call me gay, and pontificate inanely about his personal philosophy.

  "You see, the thing about me, I like to keep it simple," Anthony declared between sips of his fresh drink. "Guys like you are always running around, asking questions, trying to make things more complicated than they need to be. And where does it get you in the end? Are you any happier for it?"

  I rolled my head over and saw him look at his watch again. "Me, it takes very little to make me happy," he continued. "A good drink, a rare steak, a sweet piece of pussy. That's what life's all about."

  The stripper cupped my chin in her hand and jerked my head back so I was facing her.

  "If you don't stop staring at him, I'm going to get jealous," she cooed teasingly and then proceeded to bury my face in her fake plastic tits and paw at my rapidly deflating hard-on through my slacks. "Do you want to go back into a private room where you'll be less distracted?"

  She gave me a playful wink.

  Anthony shook his head and tapped the face of his watch. "Nah, we've got some place to be." He dug a couple crumpled bills out of his jeans and slipped them under the stripper's garter, then added, "Besides, I'm pretty sure he's a fag."

  She shrugged and climbed off me. "Figures."

  Anthony yanked me to my feet and steered me across the dimly-lit club to one of the three long, oval stages on the main floor. We planted ourselves on two stools right at the edge of the stage, and Anthony pulled out a thick wad of bills.

  "So, can I ask what the hell we're doing here, or is that a dumb question?" I ventured.

  "I'm proving a point," he replied obliquely. "So stop being such a limp-dick fairy and enjoy the fucking show."

  Just then the sound system fired up Peaches' "Fuck the Pain Away", and two women took the stage, one at each end. The one on our end wore a purple lace-up corset, black hot pants, fishnet stockings, and knee-high leather boots. She also had long purple hair and a black domino mask.

  Anthony slapped the back of his hand into my chest like we were old pals. "Looks like that got your attention."

  I suddenly was extremely uncomfortable.

  He laid out five twenty-dollar bills in front of us on the stage, which got the stripper's attention, and she looked startled to see us sitting there.

  But then I realized that she wasn't Violet. She didn't have any scars along the left side of her body.

  Reluctantly, she danced over to us, and Anthony kept laying out enough currency for her to stay there for the rest of the song, despite the obvious uncertainty in her face.

  Writhing on the stage, spreading her knees and thrusting her pelvis up at us, she slowly peeled off her clothes one piece at a time until only the domino mask was left. She glided her hands sensually along her smooth, ghostly pallid flesh and slipped two fingers between her glistening pink labia.

  Anthony grinned in satisfaction and clamped his hand down on my shoulder while leering hungrily at her. I started to feel a knot of guilt twisting in my gut, but I couldn't take my eyes off the immaculate beauty on stage.

  The song died down, and the stripper reached to scoop up the bills Anthony had laid out. As she extended her hand, Anthony quickly grabbed her wrist and gave her a good, startling jerk.

  "So how about a private dance, honey?"

  An unmistakable look of fear flashed in her eyes, but she slowly nodded in agreement.

  Anthony insisted on dragging me along, and she led us to a small cubby hole in back of the club about the size of a department store dressing room. As Anthony and I sat down, she pulled a red velvet curtain across the entrance to give us privacy.

  "Do you want me to dance for both of you together or one at a time?"

  "Just me," Anthony answered. "He's only here to learn something."

  The stripper climbed onto him and started her lap dance, still naked but for the domino mask. She did her best to act sexy and aroused, but she was nearly trembling with fear, like she was rubbing up against a ticking time bomb.

  "You know what makes guys like me different from guys like you?"

  I shook my head, at a loss and trying not to watch this poor terrified girl grinding her pussy against the unsettlingly large log in Anthony's jeans.

  "Faith."

  Even the stripper paused for a second and did a double-take, trying to process whether he actually just said what she thought she heard.

  "I have faith in a higher power, faith in a grand design that's larger than I could ever hope to comprehend. And this knowledge gives me freedom because I don't have to worry about questioning how I fit into the big picture, all I have to do is play the role that's been laid out for me."

  The stripper resumed her gyrations, although at this point the fear in her eyes was mostly replaced with a confusion that closely matched my own.

  "Wait, hold on, I'm having trouble seeing the connection between being Dylan Maxwell's violent thug and God's divine plan."

  "Take it out."

  "Excuse me?"

  Anthony rolled his eyes. "Not you, her."

  The stripper fumbled with the buttons on his fly. I quickly turned to look away.

  "Jesus fucking Christ!"

  Anthony slapped me upside the head. "Don't blaspheme!"

  "What the fuck?" For a second I involuntarily jerked my head back to face him and caught a glimpse of the stripper straddling his left thigh while kissing his neck and pumping her hand back and forth between his legs. I quickly whipped my head away again.

  He let out a low chuckle and then continued, "You see, I'm like an existential hitman. When people get too abstract, start questioning the natural order of things, looking under rocks that shouldn't be turned over, losing sight of what really matters, that's when I step in to put everything back into perspective. I make sure shit turns real real, real fast."

  He let out a series of low, gravelly grunts, and I could hear the stripper pumping her hand faster, hear the friction of dry skin on skin, until finally Anthony let out an extended groan and I felt his body shift and tense up on the seat next to me.

  "Fucking hell," I muttered, still turned away.

  The stripper stood up and began to dress.

  "Let me give you an example," he said, giving my thigh a few hearty pats. "Say you're a stripper, and you come into a place day-in, day-out, taking your clothes off for fat, ugly slobs and giving handjobs in some dark little closet. And you start asking questions about things like why is the rich asshole who owns this place taking such a big cut off all these poor working-class girls who are the ones stuck washing clumps of jizz out of their hair every night?

  "And that's a dangerous question to ask because it leads to others – questions about fairness, about your station in life, about the exploitation of women. Heady stuff. It's easy to get so wrapped up in these questions that you forget that at the end of the day, what it really boils down to is survival. But when you lose sig
ht of that, you start making bad decisions.

  "Decisions like, say, skimming off the top before giving your rich asshole owner his cut."

  The stripper suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, her fingers frozen in mid-action while lacing up her corset.

  "Now to me, that's just plain dumb," he continued. "Imagine, throwing away your most basic biological imperative, survival itself, over some petty abstract notion of fairness or justice. But that's what happens when you make things more complicated than they need to be."

  Anthony lunged forward like a panther, springing from his seat with blinding speed and slamming the stripper up against the wall, his massive, powerful hands tightening around her throat in a crushing grip.

  I watched in stunned silence as he choked the life out of her, then let her collapse into a heap, her cheek landing in the small puddle of his white goo on the floor, the domino mask still affixed to her face.

  Anthony meanwhile was left holding her purple wig, which had come off while she struggled. He tossed it onto my lap.

  "Here's a souvenir. Something to rub against your face on those long lonely nights when you're jacking off and imagining what I'm doing to the real deal."

  I looked down at the disembodied wig and ran my fingers through its synthetic locks.

  "Fag," Anthony snorted.

  We walked out through club unmolested. Either no one realized what happened, or they all knew better than to let on that they did.

  As we approached the Porsche, he tossed the keys to me.

  "You can drive your fucking self home," he said.

  I didn't actually agree, seeing as how I still couldn't keep my eyes open and even when they were, I was seeing at least triple. But I was still too shell-shocked to even attempt to protest.

  He continued on to a black Escalade parked nearby. I shook my head and wondered just how stage managed the night had been.

  "You know, for someone who claims to like to keep it simple, you sure have a round-about way of making a point. This whole setup smacks of your boss. You should warn him he's starting to get transparent."