“I’m here to see Conrad,” he said.
The seniors looked over and stared at the man in the red suit. A nearsighted, expectant grandmother even approached him in the hope that it was her grandson before being turned away by the young man’s scowl.
Standing in the center of the room, the music teacher had no patience for visitors. “And a-one and a-two . . .” she called out. The piano started up again and the ivories chimed out the first three bars of Eamon’s “I Don’t Want You Back.” The seniors turned to face the group and joined in halfway through the first verse.
From the back, three shadowy figures stood up from their folding chairs.
A smile pursed Conrad’s lips. He walked towards the man in the red suit, a cane assisting him as he moved. Alfred and Billy Bones followed.
“Is there someplace we can talk in private?” the man in the red suit said.
Five minutes later the four of them were alone in a room down the hall. The man in the red suit stared at the three old geezers sitting on the faded davenport in front of him. Conrad looked exactly as the stories said he would. He was dressed in all black, with a thin moustache curled at the ends and a full, thick head of hair. His face belied his ninety years, with purplish swags under his eyes and a subtle gray hue to his flesh. He was wearing, of all things, a crimson-lined cape, which gave him the pretense of a dramatic stage villain. He spoke with an English accent — faked for decades, of course — and maintained an air of quiet confidence about him. The other two, with their worn three-piece brown suits and massive, distracting wrinkles, looked like Statler and Waldorf, the two old men who heckled the Muppets from the comfort of their balcony seats. Billy Bones was the short fat one. Alfred was tall and skinny.
“There has been some concern on the part of my employers that you might not be able to complete this task,” the man in the red suit said.
“Nonsense.” Conrad dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
“There’s been talk about your advanced age,” the man said. “There are rumors of epilepsy.”
“Leprosy?” Billy Bones yelled.
“No, epilepsy.”
“There ain’t been no leprosy since the turn of the century,” Billy said.
“That’s not what I said.”
“That is what you said, son.”
The man in the red suit looked perplexed.
“Admit it!” Billy Bones slapped his armrest.
“There are concerns about this one’s hearing,” the man pointed to Billy Bones. “And this one can’t speak,” he motioned toward Alfred.
“That’s not true,” Alfred mouthed without emitting a sound.
“I assure you — none of us has epilepsy,” Conrad said.
“My great-aunt had leprosy,” Billy Bones said. “It’s a hell of a way to die.”
“We are quite capable of completing the task before us,” Conrad said.
“You check the halls for fingers falling off — that’s how you spot leprosy. They leave ’em behind in their haste, they do,” Billy Bones said. His sentence drifted off into doddering laughter.
The man in the red suit closed his eyes and sighed.
“Did you bring everything?” Conrad said.
The man reached into his breast pocket and produced an envelope.
“Hand it to my associate,” Conrad said.
Alfred took the envelope full of hundred-dollar bills and tucked it inside his jacket. The man flipped open his briefcase. Conrad didn’t even glance at its contents. He waited until the man in the red suit set the case down on the coffee table. “And the target,” he said. “Did you bring a picture of the target?”
From his jacket, the man pulled out a second envelope containing a single photograph and handed it to Alfred.
“We’ll be in touch,” Conrad stood up to shake the man’s hand. The man in the red suit put out his hand and when he did, Conrad grabbed it and pulled him in close. “Do not make the mistake of letting my old age fool you, young man. I am the most dangerous chap you will ever meet.”
The man in the red suit tried to pull his hand away but couldn’t. Conrad was surprisingly strong.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the old stories,” Conrad said.
“Yes sir,” the man said.
“Then you know how many men I’ve killed.”
He squeezed the man’s hand hard.
“Two hundred.” The man’s fingers crunched under Conrad’s iron grip.
“Two hundred and twelve,” Conrad said. “So you’d best clean that smug look off your face before I do it for you.”
“Yes sir,” the man said.
Conrad released his hand and the man backed away.
“Your employers will hear from us when the job is done,” he said.
The man in the red suit exited the room and stormed down the hallway. He climbed into his car and drove away from the retirement home as quickly as he could, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe his bosses had chosen these three. One of them was deaf and the other was a mute. The only reason he had any faith in them at all was Conrad. “At least there’s nothing wrong with the leader,” the man in the red suit said as he pulled onto the highway. He picked up his cell phone and called his bosses.
“The package has been delivered.”
“Do you have faith that they can do the job?” the voice on the other end said.
The man in the red suit thought about the pain searing through his arm and the numbness that had yet to subside in his fingers. “Yes,” he said.
Back in the retirement home, the three associates were still sitting on the same couch with the items lined up in a row on the coffee table. Conrad reached forward and felt the objects inside the briefcase. He groped to the side and ran his fingers along the edges of the cold hard cash. The photograph stared back at his glassy, blind eyes. Conrad sat up and waited. A few seconds passed before he smacked Alfred on the arm. “Eventually one of you is going to have to tell me what we have here.”
Billy Bones spoke up.
“The case has everything we asked for. Are you sure you remember how to use these things?”
“Of course I’m sure. Now what else is there?”
“The money’s all here. Forty thousand dollars in hundreds.”
“And the target?”
Billy Bones stuttered a little.
Alfred tried to speak. Conrad and Billy edged in close to where they could feel his breath on their skin: “Alfred Hitchcock.” He pointed to the picture, taken outside the local marketplace. Standing in front of a blurred-out man in a tuxedo was a startled-looking Henrik Nordmark.
three
Later that morning the young man from the lottery kiosk entered the third floor of a brand new office tower downtown for the biggest job interview of his life. Roland breathed in deep. The entire building, from its dark red window blinds to the plush chairs in the lobby, smelled like the inside of a new car. He had long since changed from his jeans into his best suit. He’d even shaved his face and ironed his clothes for the big day.
Roland worked in a cubicle at the other end of town in a mind-numbing but more often than not tolerable office job in which he created periodical reports that he was pretty sure no one ever read. Recently management had unveiled a new company ambassador, television star Regis Philbin, who appeared in company-produced videos wearing a shiny Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? tie and promoting the new company mantra: What Would Regis Do? Roland had seen at least six of these videos and in each of them, a youthful-looking employee with a slightly befuddled gaze behind his eyes (and always carrying a file folder) would be faced with a moral dilemma, at which point Regis would pop seemingly out of nowhere to provide an answer that was equal parts ethically unimpeachable and difficult to argue with. Roland could hardly go a day at work without someone asking him what Regis would do.
Today he had an interview to be the new special assistant to the International Vice President in charge of Employee Relations. The job involved travel
to all manner of exotic locations and every kind of perk one could imagine: great food, a company expense account, and most importantly, the opportunity to escape the dreary doldrums of his gray cubicle walls.
Two days ago, Roland and his cubicle neighbor Mason spotted a confidential job posting on their supervisor’s desk and decided to apply without telling anyone. Their company outsourced the interview to a human resources company on the other side of town. The whole meeting had a clandestine air about it and Roland stole quietly through the hallways until he reached the office.
As he entered, Roland saw Mason sitting in the waiting room.
“Are you at 10:30?” Roland said.
“Yep. How about you?”
“I’m right after you.” Roland sat down beside Mason. He looked down to see a hint of white athletic socks edging out underneath Mason’s wool pant-leg. Roland smiled.
When they first started working together, Mason had seemed cool. Over time, however, things slowly turned sour. In the four years Roland had known him, Mason had done some things under the guise of friendship that Roland considered to be, while not blatantly immoral, downright despicable.
Mason started by placing an open case of sardines in Roland’s desk drawer.
A week after the smell died down, Mason switched the letters on Roland’s computer by prying them out with a pair of scissors and jamming them back in. When Roland sat down at his computer to start the day, he looked at his keyboard and instead of typing his regular password, he typed in a vile curse word that was equal parts sexist and racist. He entered the same password over and over again, all the while staring at the keyboard thinking that something was horribly wrong. Roland speculated that he might be having a flashback to his college days when he smoked way too much pot. Or perhaps he was suffering a slight stroke.
He called the company help desk and told the lady who answered that his password wasn’t working. She used her computer to connect to Roland’s desktop and decode the asterisks Roland had typed in.
“Is this some dirty joke?”
Roland insisted it wasn’t.
The help desk lady fell suddenly silent and her voice took on a clipped, even hostile tone.
In the next cubicle, Mason laughed like a hyena until he couldn’t take it anymore. He came over, pried the keys out of Roland’s keyboard and placed them back where they belonged while Roland apologized profusely to the offended help desk employee.
The incident with the keyboard turned out to be only a single drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of cruel trickery that followed.
A short while later, Mason convinced Roland to join him in a beard growing contest. The rules were simple. Each participant had to grow a beard for one full year. Shaving of the neck was permissible but any trimming, tidying, un-natting, or shaping in any way with a sharp metallic device was strictly prohibited. The participant with the longest beard at the end of the year would be taken for lunch by his vanquished opponent. Mason suggested the contest with unbridled enthusiasm and even described the lunch as a “pizza party.” Roland thought it was a great idea and immediately stopped shaving. Mason, for his part, didn’t shave either.
A week later Mason was sent on a work assignment to southern Florida for five months. While he was gone, a wolfman-like plague of patches grew on Roland’s face. Black and orange and ugly, the beard sprouted from his face like untamed weeds, focusing primarily on the right corner of his chin while neglecting the upper left moustache region entirely. Roland had to endure inquisitive looks bordering on aversion from his coworkers as well as random catcalls from people on the street.
It would all be worth it, even the severe itching, Roland decided, if he won that pizza party. Sure, Mason would also get to eat the pizza. But he would have to pay for it and free pizza from a vanquished opponent always tastes better than pizza you have to pay for.
Mason and Roland had been trading barbs over email for months, bragging as to the various aspects of their beards — length, fullness, mean average bristle count. At the end of the fifth month, Mason returned from his work assignment. Roland hurried in to work to compare beards, only to discover Mason sitting in his chair, bright-eyed, tanned . . . and clean-shaven. When Mason saw Roland’s beard, he broke out laughing. Mason had never grown a beard. It had all been part of an elaborate — and quite successful — ruse to make Roland look like the office lunatic.
Mason wondered out loud why Roland wasn’t laughing.
“Come on,” he said. “Everyone appreciates a good burn.”
Roland did not appreciate the burn.
In mock friendship, Mason offered to still pay for their pizza party. Devastated, Roland couldn’t bring himself to accept the invitation.
Roland looked at Mason in his suit and tie, sitting beside him in the waiting room of the interviewer’s office.
“How are you doing?” Roland said.
“I’m sore. I played Ultimate last night.”
“Ultimate?”
“Yeah, it’s a new sport. My legs are really sore from playing.”
Roland had never heard of Ultimate before. What was this new sport that Mason had been playing? If they called it “Ultimate,” it must be something pretty awesome. Roland’s mind swirled with all of the possibilities. Perhaps it was some variation on kickboxing. Or jousting. Or a brand of dodgeball played above a flaming pit in which the competitors are enclosed in a cage and the spectators are permitted, within reason of course, to poke the opposing team with sticks, or better yet, knives. It must be a really tough sport for Mason to deem it the ultimate sport of them all.
“What’s involved in this Ultimate?”
“You catch a Frisbee, you throw it to someone else, and then you run and catch it again.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, it’s like the toughest game you could ever play.”
“Really?” Roland said.
“Yes, really.”
“Do you play it against giant men who threaten to tackle you?”
“No. It’s co-ed. And there’s no tackling.”
“Then why do they call it Ultimate?”
Mason rolled his eyes. “They used to call it Ultimate Frisbee. But the Frisbee brand name is trademarked by some big corporation who threatened to sue. So the league organizers shortened it to Ultimate.”
“That name’s a little misleading, don’t you think?”
“How so?”
“Well, when you said ‘Ultimate,’ I immediately started thinking about all of these insane, American Gladiator–type games you might be competing in. But you’re just running around throwing a Frisbee.”
“You don’t understand,” Mason said. “It’s a really hard game.”
“Oh, I believe you. But is it the ultimate game? Wouldn’t hockey or football or Greco-Roman wrestling be a better candidate to be called the ultimate sport?”
Mason shook his head. “You’ll never understand until you play it yourself.”
“Maybe I should. Can I join your team?”
“No. We’re only looking for girls right now.”
Roland turned away and stared at the corner of the room. Mason shook his head again and busied himself by reading a three-year-old copy of the New Yorker on the coffee table until Roland spoke.
“You got your hair cut,” he said.
“Yep,” Mason ran his hand through his hair. It was short on the sides with an angular poof on top.
“How much did that run you?”
“Eight bucks at Magic Cuts. They gave me a hot dog and a pop too. No extra charge.”
“Wow. It looks good.” Roland’s tone dripped with sarcasm but Mason didn’t seem to pick up on it. He had put down the copy of the New Yorker and was busy flipping through an issue of Golf Digest.
“Do you see this guy?” Mason pointed to a middle-aged golfer in a striped shirt on the cover. “He was a golf instructor for years until about eight months ago when he made the big time. He played in his first major golf tournam
ent and won the whole thing. The prize money was something like eight million bucks. Then he traded up big time.”
Roland faced Mason for the first time since they sat down.
“What do you mean?”
“The golf pro made millions and the first thing he did was divorce his wife so he could marry a Victoria’s Secret model, you know, kind of like what Lance Armstrong did when he divorced his first wife to date Sheryl Crow.”
“People really do this?”
“It happens all the time,” Mason said.
“Really?” Roland said.
“Really.”
Roland undid his suit jacket and sat there lost in thought. Two minutes passed in silence before the door to the interviewer’s office opened. Out walked a gruff old man in an expensive tight-fitting suit. He had a round belly and his face was all eyebrows and Coke-bottle glasses. “Mason, you’re next,” he said.
They shut the door behind them. For fifteen minutes, Roland picked at the rubber on the sole of his shoe until Mason came out. Both men were all smiles as they exited the interview room. They shook hands, patted each other on the shoulder and even shared a laugh. The interviewer gave Mason a gentle slap on his shoulder and flexed the bicep on his right arm. Roland was surprised to see Mason reach up and feel the man’s bulging muscle.
The interviewer looked at Roland. “Let me hit the bathroom and then we’ll talk,” he said.
Roland waited until he left the room.
“What was that all about?” he said.
Mason hesitated. “It was the strangest thing,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The interview was going really well until about the ten-minute mark when the guy challenged me to arm wrestle.”
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel Page 2