by Billy Wells
On Monday, after several fruitless days of surveillance, he saw a red Porsche pull up to the front gate. Through his binoculars, Best caught a glimpse of a young, athletic-looking super-stud in the impressive car. The handsome blond man smiled at the guard, and after a few words and a look at a clipboard, the tall man in a blue uniform opened the gate and waved him through.
Three hours later, Best saw the young man return to the gate, say a few words to the guard, and drive away. Best made a note in his phone of the date and time the young man had come and left the estate.
That evening, he saw in the evening paper, the senator was attending a convention in Atlantic City that week.
The next afternoon at approximately the same time as the day before, a white Jaguar pulled up at the gate. Once again, Best saw a strikingly handsome young man with biceps bulging in his expensive looking polo shirt, speak to the guard for a few seconds, and enter after the gate lifted. The young stud had long, dark shoulder-length hair, and a surfer tan.
Four hours later, the visitor waved to the guard as he drove through the security gate.
Best pulled into the road and followed the man in his Jaguar to an upscale high-rise office complex with views of the city. He unobtrusively followed him into the lobby and watched him enter a plush office on the first level. The sign at the entrance read “HAMMER MAGNUM ESCORT SERVICE. The window display had ten portraits of muscular, handsome men showing perfect white teeth in extremely provocative poses. Best recognized the blond man he’d seen driving the Porsche the day before lying on a white, bear skin rug wearing only a skimpy Speedo in one of the photos.
“My God,” he thought, “how could a senator’s wife get away with such an obvious tryst in her own home? The senator was at least twenty-five years older than his wife and looked like the perfect candidate for a heart attack.
Best noticed that golf and tennis lessons as well as physical fitness training were alternative services the Hammer Magnum group provided. Could one of the muscle-bound bruisers be teaching Crabtree golf or tennis? Somehow, he doubted it.
The next afternoon, a young red-haired man with a mustache pulled up to the gate in an Alpha Romero convertible. Best could see a set of golf clubs in the back seat, and the hunk, who reminded him of someone who might be in a Calvin Klein commercial, had a magnificent tan and wore rich looking clothes.
The passing of each day seemed like an eternity, but he continued the maddening surveillance with the patience of Job.
During the second week, he saw the blond man pull up to the gate in his Porsche on Monday at one p.m., the same as he did the previous week.
The next day, the same dark man came at the same time as before, and the following day, the third man arrived, just as he had the previous week.
“Christ,” he thought, “that horny bitch certainly has an insatiable sex drive for her age.” He also knew her husband had returned from Atlantic City over a week ago, and her trysts had continued even with the senator in town under the same roof. Best wondered what the old fart was doing to satisfy his libido if he could still get it up. Was his nymphomaniac wife doing him, too?
When the blond man appeared on the next Monday at the same time, Best decided to put his plan into motion the next afternoon.
That evening, he followed Crabtree's lover for the next day to an exclusive nightclub. He struck up a conversation with him at the bar and slipped a packet of Rohypnol into his drink at the first opportunity.
When the drug and the model could no longer hold his head up, Best told the bartender he was a friend who had too much to drink. Fortunately, the bartender didn't know the model and got two bouncers to help Best get him to his car. When the valet pulled up at the entrance, Best gave the attendant the parking stub and a huge tip and the bouncers laid the semi-conscious man on the back seat.
When Best got the man back to the shit hole he had rented for the occasion, he strapped him to the dilapidated king-size bed with duct tape. He was out like a light and snoring peacefully the moment his head hit the pillow. The drugs Best put in the man’s drink were supposed to keep him down until morning. Afterward, an even better cocktail of drugs would keep him in La La Land for at least twenty-four more hours. By then, Best hoped be somewhere in South America if everything went as planned.
Best spent two hours applying makeup to make himself look as much like Crabtree’s lover as possible. He went to the escort’s apartment and tried on some of his clothes. They weren't perfect, but one set of pants and a shirt were close enough. Of the three men, this man was the closest to Best’s own physique and coloring.
He found a large pair of aviator sunglasses, which covered at least a third of his face. If Best could bluff his way through the gate, he believed he would have a chance to make it inside the house. He didn't want to hurt the guard, but he would if he had to. He didn't expect Crabtree would have many servants at the house when she had sex with someone half her age, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
When he pulled up in front of the gate, Best held his phone in his left hand against his face, which partially blocked the view of the guard through the side window. He was wearing the model’s Omega watch, and he had a silk scarf wrapped high on his neck to avoid the security guard’s direct stare.
Trying to emulate what the others had done before, he lowered the phone slightly and said, “How's it going, George?”
The guard glanced at him in the black Jaguar and made a note on his clipboard. Then, he unexpectedly said, “Do you think Jeter will be able to play tonight? The Yanks really need this game.”
Best paused a beat and tried to maintain his composure. He had heard the model speak a few sentences, but he really didn't know exactly how he sounded when he talked, and he didn't know shit about baseball. He paused from his phone conversation, and lifting his eyes slightly rather than his head, he said, “I hope he can do more than play. Let's hope he can get a hit.”
“Amen, brother,” the tall man in blue answered. Then, for a split second, his expression seemed to darken, causing Best to tighten his grip on the 38 he ‘d brought along that was hidden from sight. He held his breath until the guard finally turned away and hit a button on the wall inside his post. When the gate finally lifted, he wasted no time driving the Jaguar through.
Best continued up the drive and parked in the circular driveway in front of the house like Crabtree’s other lovers had done. His sport coat concealed his gun, which he placed in his belt in the small of his back. He held the Taser in his right hand and rang the doorbell with his left.
When the door opened, Best saw the seductive smile on Crabtree's face morph into an expression of shock and confusion. She let out a shrill shriek and started to retreat backwards when he lunged after her and gave her a painful jolt of electricity. Her body went completely limp, and she pitched forward and she fell face first on to the ceramic tile floor. The dainty nose Best had given her ten years before flattened with a sickening thud, and a sliver of her front tooth bounced like a white marble across the tile. Best grinned like a man who had just won the lottery when he saw the blood pooling at her nostrils on the expensive floor.
As he returned to the car for his scalpels and other paraphernalia, Best wondered if George had heard Crabtree's scream. He peered across the driveway in the direction of the gate, but saw no sign of the guard bounding to the rescue. He listened, but no phone was ringing. After two trips of carting the tools of his trade into the house, he closed the massive entry door and placed his equipment on the dining room table. He lifted Crabtree’s svelte middle-aged carcass and dumped it unceremoniously onto the magnificent mahogany table like a sack of potatoes. It pleased him to hear her head thump upon the exquisite high gloss surface. He chuckled at the thought of her having a nice bump on her brow tomorrow morning to complement his surgical atrocities.
Extracting various straps and constricting devices, Best spent a half an hour fastening the miserable bitch to the hundred thousand dollar dining
room table. He turned on the crystal chandelier, which hung from the sixteen foot ceiling, that he imagined might weigh close to a ton. He tweaked the dimmer slightly to diminish the blinding candlepower of the decadent light fixture. The lighting wasn’t perfect for the facelift, but it would have to do.
Best had spent ten years agonizing over every incision of this masterpiece that would be talked about far more than any other plastic surgery ever performed. It took a master to make someone beautiful. The great surgeons of the day performed the procedure thousands of times, but no one had purposely performed surgery to make a face so monstrous that no human being on earth could bear to see it without recoiling in horror.
Each time, a prison bull had mounted him while four others held him down until they too could climb aboard for sloppy seconds, thirds, and so on, only this was what kept him going. His only reason for living was to give Crabtree a makeover so horrible that everyone who saw it would puke their guts out.
Best began his task with painstaking precision. Each incision was a labor of love. To achieve the ultimate horror, he had to strip the face of symmetry completely. After four hours of reshaping, adding, subtracting, this and that he stepped back to admire his thoughtful artistry. As he walked right and then left, depending on what direction he looked at it, he saw flashes of almost every movie monster he had ever seen in some part of Crabtree's face.
The top of her head was partially skull-like and partially hairy like a balding gorilla with one horn protruding from one side of her head. One eyeball was a bloody socket, and the other a bulging orb with black spider veins that could actually see nestled in the cheek between the nose and the ear. Another bloodshot eye peered out from the middle of her forehead. One side of the twisted mouth sported curled uneven teeth, and the other had small, chipmunk teeth like the vampire from the silent era of film. One eyebrow was hairless and one appeared to be born from a werewolf. He could see flashes of the Predator, Alien, the monster from The Descent, Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, the werewolf from The Howling and even a little of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Best could barely keep from puking himself as he admired his excellent work.
It was a masterpiece, and now that it was finished, he could go on with the rest of his life.
The final decision was should he wait until Crabtree became conscious and saw herself in the mirror or should he split and be on his way south right away. The longer he waited, the greater the possibility something would go wrong.
But, after all these years of anticipation, there was no way he could leave without seeing Crabtree's face when she looked in the mirror. It would be priceless. A cherished memory he would treasure for the rest of his life. He decided to wait no matter what the consequences.
Suddenly, from the right, three men in black suits burst into the room with assault rifles. When Best reached for his gun in his belt, two more men grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor. He recognized the senator shuffling into the room looking twenty years older than he did on TV.
“Your name is Michael Best. Correct?” the old man asked.
After Best said nothing, three beefy men lifted him from the floor and holding him fast, pointed him in the direction of Senator Crabtree, who started grinning from ear to ear, “You don't have to talk, we already know who you are. I suspected you might be angry after the ten years of sodomy she put you through, so we've been watching your every move since you got out. Believe me, it wasn't my idea to frame you. I guess you learned the hard way that my wife is a very vindictive woman.”
Best watched George, the guard from the front gate, enter the room. He was no longer dressed in his uniform and was pointing a gun at him. The three muscular male escorts strode in next, and the one he had drugged and then impersonated lunged at him and gave him a crippling blow to the midsection. “Sorry, Best,” he said, “I couldn't resist the cheap shot after what you put me through.”
“How long will my wife be out?” the senator asked the doctor who was writhing in pain on the floor.
The senator lit a cigar and waited for him to catch his breath from the sucker punch.
When Best was able to sit up, he still refused to answer the question.
“Hey Joe, get the hedge trimmers, the senator barked. Let's take off a few fingers until the doctor decides to talk.”
A small man with a cruel smile disappeared into the garage. After a brief absence, he returned with the hedge trimmers.
“Look, Best, this is going to get ugly unless you tell me what I want to know,” the senator prodded.
The small man moved toward the doctor with the heavy-duty garden tool.
“All right, all right,” Best shouted, squirming backwards as much as he could with two men holding him.
“I gave her a much lighter dose than usual. She's going to be coming out of it very soon, and when she does, she’s going to be in excruciating pain.”
“Damn, Best, you’re a real masochist, but you know, I really don't blame you,” the senator said, obviously enjoying every minute of the proceedings.
“Are you going to kill me after what I did to your wife?” the doctor asked.
“Kill you?” the senator said, a grin filling his red alcoholic face. “No, we're not going to kill you. I’d give you a medal if I could, but I won't be able to do that.”
The room full of thugs chuckled, then, they all looked at each other like the senator had told a sidesplitting joke.
“When my bodyguards and me came home, we caught you red-handed right after you murdered the only woman I ever loved.” the senator said.
Everyone, except Best laughed in unison.
“You wanted revenge after what she had done to you for all those years,” the senator continued.
“What do you mean? Your wife isn’t dead. She's messed up, I’ll grant you that. I don't think you're going to enjoy fucking her with the face I've given her, but medically, there’s no reason foe her not to live a long, humiliating life. Happily, no surgeon can correct what I've done to her.”
“Hey, no hard feelings, Doc,” the senator said. “I’ve got no problem with what you did. I know my wife's a bitch, and I've wanted to get rid of her for a long time. I'm sorry I can't reward you for what you're gonna do for me.”
“I’m not going to do anything for you,” Best replied firmly. “If you want her dead, you’ll have to get one of your hired thugs to do it. I’ve done what I set out to do. So have at it, you miserable creep. Blow her brains out.”
The senator stared at him incredulously with his mouth agape, “Damn, doc, you’re not too fast on the uptake. We don’t need you to pull the trigger. We need you to take the fall for the murder wrap. Capiche?”
Suddenly, Best understood what the senator had in store for him. He could already feel the prison bulls reaming him another asshole.
“Yeah, I'd say killing a senator’s wife should get you life without any possibility of parole since the state doesn't have the death penalty. But before we blow her brains out with your gun and call the cops to take you away, don’t you want to see the look on the bitch’s face when she looks in the mirror?”
The senator threw his hands in the air like the conductor of the New York Symphony, and everyone in the room, except Best, shouted with gusto in unison, “We do!”
And then like the sweetest music ever played on earth, they heard Crabtree’s pitiful whine begin to vibrate the crystal in the dining room fixture. An arsenal of firearms turned n her direction.
Like a putrid carcass of road kill ravaged by a flock of turkey buzzards on a hot summer day, the monstrous face rose from the table and tried to focus with two of her three eyes on the mirror in front of her.
For a few seconds, everyone stood like statues, riveted in their tracks, unable to breathe from the unspeakable horror before them.
Then, everyone, including Best, who was about to spend the rest of his life being sodomized by prison bulls, broke into a tirade of uproarious, hysterical laughter, as Crabtree be
gan to scream and scream and scream some more….
THE BLIZZARD
Helen saw the drifting snow outside the kitchen window. Harry was supposed to get home early. His company only worked half a day before the Christmas holidays. She wondered if he had lost track of time and missed the train. It usually did not matter if he was a little late, but this weekend they were to meet at her parents’ estate in Medford, New Jersey, which was two and a half hours from Manhattan on a good day. Tonight was Christmas Eve and the Friday before the long holiday weekend; now, together with the blizzard, the commute by rail would certainly be a nightmare. There was no telling when Harry would arrive in Medford.
Helen hated to think she might be alone in this spooky old house for most of the evening. Even on a summer day, the great expanse of the 200-year-old, twenty-room mansion unsettled her, but she feared the night and the blizzard without Harry to keep her company would stress her to the breaking point. Even when Harry was with her, the incessant, weird noises frightened her enormously, particularly those that came from the part of the house that hadn’t been occupied for years. Whenever she mentioned hearing a strange sound, Harry called her an “old fraidy cat” and laughed mercilessly. She knew old houses were prone to have creaks and groans, but that reality had never given her comfort.
Placing another log in the fireplace, she turned on the TV and channel surfed to a soft rock music station. She’d prepared an exquisite dinner and chilled a bottle of expensive champagne.
They always opened one present on Christmas Eve, and the rest in the morning. Malcolm, their devoted caretaker, had brought in a twelve-foot tall tree and decorated it in the expansive living room for this special weekend. He’d also hung red stockings from the mantle just like the ones the family had when she was a little girl.
Outside, the howling wind and the sound of the snow on the exterior added a foreboding feeling in spite of the festive decorations. The clock on the mantle pounded out seven ponderous bongs. Helen decided to go to the wet bar and make a martini to calm her nerves. Returning to the living room, she sat on the sofa and sipped the potent Grey Goose cocktail while snow danced on the wind across the picture window. She wondered how Harry would ever make it to Medford in this blizzard.