A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion]

by William Lashner

  “We don’t believe you.”

  He took his stick and pressed the pulped mess that was my knee. The pain shot like a spike from my leg up my spine, detonating in the base of my brain. I fell back onto the gravel, my head hitting the stones so forcefully it actually felt like relief.

  “Should Cassandra kill your associate?” said Maambong. “Would that jog your memory?”

  “I told you what I know,” I said, the gravel pressing daggers into my back. “Do whatever you want to him, I don’t give a shit.”

  “Really, dude?” said Kief. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

  “What about you?” he said to Kief.

  “I could use some pharmaceuticals. Tylenol, methadone, Oxy if you have it. Eighties would be good.”

  “Tell us where the girl is and we’ll take care of you.”

  “I didn’t see her,” said Kief, which was a startling lie. “She wasn’t here. Maybe Phil’s telling the truth.”

  “We doubt that. Mr. Kubiak is incapable of telling the truth. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kubiak? Isn’t that a sad symptom of your condition?”

  I struggled to sit up again on the gravel, my head weaving this way and that. “Then why the hell are you even asking me?”

  “It seems the thing to do before we kill you both. We would offer to let your associate run free if you told us, but you know we would do no such thing, and in any event, the fate of another human being wouldn’t matter to a specimen like you.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It wouldn’t matter.”

  “Again?” said Kief. “How many times are you throwing me under that bus, boss?”

  “So, Cassandra,” I said, “I see that once again you end up on the right side of the purge.”

  “I’m going to miss you, Phil. We were a nice match. But we always understood each other perfectly. Sentimentality is for saps.”

  “What really happened to Rand?”

  “We had the most wonderful weekend in Belize. It was perfect, the sun, the wine, the sex, even the ending. In the rain forest, up against a tree. I slit his throat as he came.”

  “Maybe he was faking it.”

  “With me?”

  “Everything’s been checked,” said Tom Preston, walking away from the line of cabins with Bert and Gordon trailing. “No one there, not even the clerk.”

  “What about our man?” said Mr. Maambong.

  “Dead.”

  “Set up a perimeter,” said Mr. Maambong. “Once these two are taken care of, we’ll find the girl. She didn’t get far.”

  “I told you she’s not here,” I said.

  “Yes, you told us,” said Mr. Maambong. “And we choose not to believe you. She is somewhere in these woods. And your other team member is probably with her. It would be quite convenient finding them together.”

  I looked over at Gordon, who was surveying the tourist camp, studiously avoiding my gaze. “I see you’re still on that gravy train, Gordon?” I said.

  “Man’s got to eat,” said Gordon without looking my way.

  “Let’s finish them now and get on with it,” said Tom Preston. “The longer we wait the more lead they have.”

  “The perimeter, Mr. Preston,” said Mr. Maambong. “You and Mr. Johnstone take the road. Don’t let anyone pass, wave away any visitors. Bert will watch the area behind the cabins.”

  Tom Preston stared for a moment and then did as he was told, giving Gordon and Bert their orders.

  “There is something we don’t understand, Mr. Kubiak,” said Mr. Maambong. “Maybe you could enlighten us.” He braced both hands on his cane and leaned forward. “You were vetted most carefully. You passed all our tests with the highest scores we ever tabulated. You even bested Tom Preston at the games. You were a perfect specimen. But you went wrong, somehow. We want to know why.”

  “I didn’t want to kill,” I said. “My mother taught me better than that.”

  “You are making a joke,” said Mr. Maambong, his face serious as death. “In time we will think back on this moment and laugh and laugh. But we all know with people like you there is no right or wrong, there just is. That is why we picked you. But even more troubling than not following our specific orders was the craziness of these last few days. Grabbing Miss Lieu, running all across the country, bringing in a lawyer, trying to fight us. Was it simple derangement, or is there a deeper flaw? See, Mr. Kubiak, there are more like you, this country is full of candidates for our positions. And when we find another specimen so pure—and we will keep on searching, it is what we do—how can we make sure that this new operative plies our trade without disappointing? What do you say, Mr. Kubiak? Tell us why a perfect specimen like yourself went so very wrong. Why, Mr. Kubiak? Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Another joke. You must think you are in a comedy club. Let us put this starkly. If you would deign to help us, we could make your death as painless as possible. Otherwise . . . the problem with death is not the destination, it is the journey that takes you there. Tell us how you ended up here, lying like a corpse already on this gravel, outsmarted, outgunned, a mewling mess of bone and gristle with nothing to look forward to but nothingness.”

  That was the question, absolutely. What had happened to me? Why did I keep making all the wrong decisions, and how did I end up here, now, beneath this gaunt fiend staring down at me with death in his beetle eyes? In the ominous hours I waited for Maambong to appear, I had contemplated how I had chosen to be in that tourist camp, waiting for a pack of killers with the odds all against me. And in those hours an answer was becoming clear, but I would sooner have grabbed that sliver sticking in my eye and twisted it than told the answer to Maambong.

  So what I did instead was let a little sob erupt in my throat, a pathetic little sob of fear to hide the sound of me hawking up a glob of phlegm, and then, with Mr. Maambong still waiting for my answer, I thrust my neck forward and expectorated.

  The glob splattered nicely onto one of those cold, dark lenses. And the sight of it was cheering. As the man said, there is no fate that cannot be overcome by spit. Or is that spite?

  Mr. Maambong didn’t react as I expected. There was no anger or disgust, nothing really at all on his cruel face. He stayed bent forward, looking down at me coldly, and then, slowly, hands pressing on the knob of his cane, he stood straight again. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and removed the glasses, and as he wiped off my spit he looked about. His eyes were small and red and porcine, as if someone had grafted the eyes of a pink little pig onto his face. When the lens was clean, he put the glasses back on.

  “Take them into one of the cabins and kill them,” he said to Cassandra.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I said.

  “Very well, then do it here, and do it slowly.” Mr. Maambong smiled at us both before walking toward Gordon and Tom Preston at the mouth of the drive.

  “Wait a second,” shouted Kief. “What about the drugs, man? Medicate the hell out of me and I’ll tell you what went wrong with him, I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Phil. Is one fucking pill too much to ask?”

  Maambong stopped and turned and looked at Kief. “Yes,” he said. “Yes it is.” And then he continued on his way.

  “This is such a pity, Phil,” said Cassandra. “And so unnecessary. But I suppose we’ll always have Jamaica.”

  “Why don’t you do it to me like you did to Rand?”

  “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get out bloodstains? But I really am going to miss you.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know. You said you wanted to see everything burn. Let me strap on Kief’s flamethrower. The fire would be so beautiful.”

  “It’s the purge. Rule number two is to always stay on the right side of the purge. Which means following orders, one thing you were never very good at.”

  “What’s rule number one?”

  “Don’t let the strap of your top ruin a good tan.”

  “I’ll remember that in hell.�
�

  “I’m sorry, darling, but Mr. Maambong told me to do it slowly.”

  She lowered her pistol from my face, to my chest, and then to my outstretched leg. But the thunder that came, came not from her gun.

  41. Pocket Change

  Have you detected the incongruity at the core of my story?

  I am incapable of caring about others, but I always schemed to make sure others cared about me. I had learned early, living in an alien world, that pretending friendship was a useful tool—a true friend would do anything to help you—and over the years I’ve convinced many that they were true friends of mine. I couldn’t feel what they felt, but if they believed I felt what they felt, I could manipulate them all the same. The friendships never lasted, the truth would out eventually and my so-called friends would drift away with a vague sense of horror, but the approach proved useful over and again.

  Take, for example, Riley. I had fought for her, joked with her, told her uncomfortable truths while repeatedly and annoyingly confessing my inability to care, all in order to build a bridge of trust and engender caring in her. Even that last call to her from Louisiana was only about keeping her on the hook in case I needed her help later on. And the fruit of that effort was her and Kief being willing to toss away their lives fighting with me at that ragged tourist camp. The same could be said for Cindy Lieu. Though I had deceived her enthusiastically and ripped a kidney from her torso, she had come to believe that my purpose now was to save her for her own sake. It all would have been worthy of a laugh if it wasn’t so pathetic.

  And yet all my manipulations ripened brilliantly as Cassandra aimed her gun at my leg. For when Cindy could have been running through the woods and searching for safety, she was instead driving a blue SUV right into the murderous heart of the tourist camp. And when Riley could have been running headlong to that beach of hers for real, she was instead riding shotgun with, well, a shotgun.

  The SUV roared like a wild beast as it barreled forward along the road, spitting gravel behind it as Gordon and Tom Preston and Cassandra, too, trained their guns on the charging monster and started pumping bullets into its grill and windshield. But the van kept coming, kept coming, in a mad rush, seemingly impervious to the feeble attempts to stop its progress, kept gaining speed and coming, coming.

  Until it leaped at Gordon, sending him flying even as Riley suddenly appeared out of the moon roof, quickly letting loose a blast from the shotgun that spun Tom Preston off his feet in a splatter of blood.

  Until it veered straight for Mr. Maambong, who stood transfixed for just a moment before trying to leap out of the way, an attempt made futile by his lameness, and so he was still within the van’s charge when it smacked him solidly enough to send his glasses flying as it slammed him forward before bounding over his body.

  Until it careered toward our sad grouping as Cassandra emptied her gun into the windshield and Kief leaped over me to get out of its way. For a moment it seemed that Cassandra had altered the van’s direction with her gun, before Riley again appeared out of the moonroof with her shotgun and not only riddled Cassandra’s perfect body but hit Kief’s flame-throwing rig, unleashing a tornado of fire that swirled around Cassandra like a plague of snakes.

  Until it slammed into the remains of the Porsche still on its side, and both hunks of metal lurched forward before stopping dead.

  But for a groan and a hiss, the assault was over. The whole thing had happened in just seconds, a magnificent vainglorious charge, which in its singular purpose and ruthlessness has become, at least for me, a model for the never-ending war against fate itself.

  I was in too much pain from my shattered leg to do much but gape at the brutality of the run and the demolition it left behind. I turned after the crash to see no movement at all in the van’s interior. I was struggling to rise as best I could on one leg so as to make my way to the ruined blue thing, when out of the corner of my eye I spied some horrid creature staggering toward me from the mouth of the road.

  Tom Preston, bloodied and hunched with pain, but still with the massive rifle in his hands, was coming at me.

  He didn’t say anything as he approached, and neither did I. What was there to say? He was going to kill me and there was nothing I could say to stop him. We had gone through this before, Tom Preston and I. There was the slightest smirk on his bloodied face and I knew what that smirk was all about. He had told me his plans to take over the squad, and I had taken his cue and made my own move for Maambong’s chair. But now his ascension was clear. After he killed me and Kief, he would no doubt kill what was left of Mr. Maambong. Then with great ceremony he, not I, would fill the seat behind the glass desk in the Miami house. He, not I, would control the teams and reap the rewards. And he, not I, would eventually move against the Principal herself, becoming the greatest Hyena of them all. It was all so easy, so obvious, and I had set it up as if just for him. He would win in the end, as he told me he would. Nothing can stop a psychopath who knows no bounds.

  Except maybe a bullet in the brain.

  I saw it before I heard it, the puff of gore that erupted from Tom Preston’s skull. A beat later he keeled over with a stiff-bodied fall, the humped rifle clattering on the gravel. And through the gap where he had been, I could see Gordon about twenty yards back, standing awkwardly, blood rolling down his face, his rifle still aimed at where Tom Preston’s head had been, which meant it was now aimed at me.

  “Took you long enough,” I said.

  “I needed some time to figure things out,” said Gordon, lowering the gun.

  “And what did you figure?”

  “I owed you both something, and now you both are paid.”

  “I guess he shouldn’t have done what he did to your leg.”

  “Now he knows.”

  “It looks busted up again.”

  “Yes it does. You mind if I sit down a bit?”

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  I watched Gordon collapse slowly to the ground. And then I heard something rattle on the ground behind me. I turned around and saw a blood-streaked Cindy with the Glock in her hand aiming it at Bert, who had dropped his rifle in response.

  “What should I do with him?” she said.

  “Leave him be,” I said as I dragged my ruined leg toward them. “He makes a mean mojito. You’re not going to cause any trouble, are you, Bert?”

  “No sir, Mr. Kubiak,” said Bert, which were the first words I ever heard him say.

  “Who is Mr. Kubiak?” said Cindy.

  “I’ll tell you later. What’s the story with Riley?”

  “She slammed into something when we hit the Porsche and fell into the backseat. She wasn’t moving when I left the car. There’s no air bag in the moonroof.”

  “You guys shouldn’t have come back.”

  “You came back for me.”

  “But not for why you think.”

  “What do I care about the why?” said Cindy Lieu. “The doing was enough.”

  I nodded and headed over to the SUV. The rear door had slammed open in the crash and Riley lay on her back upon the humped floor, one leg on the seat, the shotgun resting on her torso. The position of her neck was awkward; blood dripped from her mouth. I was staring at her, wondering idly if she was still alive, when I heard Mr. Maambong moan.

  He had been leveled in the wild charge of the SUV and now there he lay, on the gravel, halfway to the road. I turned and watched as he struggled to crawl across the drive, using one hand to pull himself forward. His lower body was useless, which wasn’t a surprise since the SUV had driven over his legs. Moving as he was, in that awkward, ruined way, he reminded me of a cockroach who had been stepped on once and was now trying to crawl away before it was stepped on again. I turned back to the SUV, leaned forward, and lifted the shotgun off Riley’s body. I gave it a pump and a new shell filled the chamber.

  Can people change?

  That was the question I asked when Ginsberg gave us our first skunky beer, the question I asked the shrink
in Washington, the question at the root of this story. And my guess is, having heard the sad litany of all my crimes and misdemeanors, you wouldn’t still be suffering my presence if you weren’t certain that change not only was possible, but that it had occurred like a miracle in my diseased brain. Why else would I have faced near-certain death to save Cindy Lieu if not because of my empathy and sense of responsibility for another human being? Cindy’s wide, scared eyes must have finally shaken something loose in my soul.

  You will think that I had changed for the better, and that thought will warm the chambers of your open heart, but you would be as much a chump as all the rest. You and your kind can look into the hearts of others, I can hear only my own singular beat, but I will tell you with my newfound honesty that it has changed not a whit. I still have no empathy, no sense of responsibility, no concern for anyone but my own ruined self. The world is still a chessboard, and in my dead eye all of you, every last one of you, are nothing more to me than pieces to be shuttled or sacrificed.

  And if you, sitting prettily across from me with tears now in your eyes, are to me as nothing but a knob of wood, imagine what I felt about that bastard Maambong flopping like a stomped-upon arthropod on that gravel lot.

  Holding on to the barrel of the shotgun and using it as a cane, I limped to his ruin of a carcass. When he saw me standing over him, he stopped the struggle and rolled with great effort onto his back. His little pink eyes blinked into the sky as they stared up at me. His lips juddered into a smile.

  “You’re still alive, Mr. Kubiak,” he said.

  “I’m as surprised about it as you.”

  “Well done. We would clap but we think our arm is broken. And our legs. What happened to our legs?”

  “Kidney girl ran over them with the SUV.”