by Joe Schwartz
When I threw my last paper, I drove straight to the nearest Walgreen’s and bought an over-the-counter bottle of sleeping pills.
I washed six pills down with a glass of warm milk, set my alarm, and wondered when I awoke if I would have the courage to do this thing.
***
The delivery driver was late. I could tell he had a bad hangover. I was careful to make sure he gave me my correct delivery. The last goddam thing I needed tonight was to come up a bundle short and have to call in a reorder with a van full of stolen shit.
“What bug crawled up your ass, buddy?” he accused me as I dubiously recounted the bundles.
“Just doing my job, pal. Balentine doesn’t need any excuse to ride my ass anymore than he already does.”
The driver laughed and waved me on. Good, I thought. For a moment I was sure he saw through me, knew I was up to something, and would make sure to comment casually to my boss about it. Now, as I hit the road, rolling and bagging today’s edition, I began to relax.
***
I went up seventeen’s driveway with the same efficiency that I practiced. In a backpack were the tools I anticipated to use. The flashlight naturally, lineman pliers to snip the computer cables, a small pry bar to bypass the door, a pair of jersey work gloves, and a five-pound deadblow hammer. The hammer was the one thing I didn’t know why I packed. It seemed as reasonable as anything else did. I would have packed a portable mixer if I thought it might have been helpful.
I got out of the van with my bag, turned on the flashlight, and walked toward the garage’s side door. The thought of getting busted entered my mind one last time. I could turn around right now, no harm, no foul. My body however was overriding my brain as I already had the pry bar in my gloved hands, inserting it in the slight gap between the door and its jamb.
With a quick thrust of power the door came open. I waited for the inevitable howl of an alarm. When I estimated at least half a minute had gone by with no lights or sirens, I rushed to the corner desk. The hard drive screeched on the concrete floor as I drug it out. I cut through the cables with little resistance. It was heavier than I expected and I almost fell in the dark taking it to the van. I checked my watch, seven minutes left.
I picked up the middle LCD flat screen monitor, which was bigger than my TV, and took it next. Four minutes left.
I slung my tools over my shoulder, gripped the safe, and fell to the floor. It was small, not much bigger than case of printer paper, but it weighed a ton. It would take a dolly to move it and probably two men to lift it.
Fuck this, I thought picking myself back up. As I stood a muscle in my leg throbbed. I limped to the door and closed it behind me. Maybe somebody would be coming by to water the plants or some such nonsense. First thing a rational person would do seeing a wide open door is call the cops. It wouldn’t take them long to figure a time line. The longer it took them to put the pieces together, the least likely I would look suspicious.
***
For the first time since I had moved into this shithole of an apartment complex, I was glad. Six thirty in the morning and not a soul was stirring. It took the bulk of my remaining strength to carry the computer monitor and hard drive to my second story apartment. I thanked God I hadn’t been so greedy as to insist on bringing that safe.
In my medicine cabinet I had leftover Vicodin from a dentist visit. I took four in a heaping gulp, using my hand to cup the tap water and swallow the large pills.
I left the computer stuff in my front room without much thought. The pain in my leg was terrible and all I wanted was to lie down. No sooner had my head hit the pillow than I passed out.
***
I woke up around nine that night. My leg was sore, but nowhere intense as it had been.
The computer was exactly where I had set it. I was curious as to its worth, but also as to its contents. There might be some valuable banking information I could sell on the black market along with credit card numbers. Identity theft was all the rage and I hoped that whoever used this computer had been stupid enough to think something like this could never happen to them.
In an Army footlocker that doubled as a coffee table, I had a collection of electronic whatnots from the plentiful Webster trash. In a matter of an hour, I re-supplied all the wires to connect the monitor to the PC, including a mouse and a keyboard missing the letters Q and K.
I was amazed as the screen came to life in brilliant Technicolor hues. Whereas I expected the standard Windows crap, there was nothing of the sort. The program was custom-made, created exclusively for the owner at a great cost.
No password was necessary and the system automatically logged on. Unlike anything I had seen before, there weren’t any icons for the Internet or user interfaces such as Word or Excel. There were however dozens thumbnail photos titled Jenny, Susie, Debbie, Tina, Nancy, Carrie, and so on.
I clicked on a file called Angie003. A girl, maybe eleven, was nude with her vagina spread open. Immediately I closed it. I had seen a lot of fucked up shit in my life, but this was by far a ten on the ‘weird-shit-o-meter.’ I clicked on another called Diana72. A girl, hardly fourteen, had her hands tied behind her back and was being sodomized by a boy no older than her.
“Goddamn,” I said out loud to myself.
I clicked the image closed and wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.
***
Number seventeen Maid Marion Lane came back right on schedule. I had a green slip in my mail to resume delivery the morning of the seventh. A name and phone number were written on the thin paper. I folded it into a neat square and placed it inside my wallet.
When I drove down Maid Marion, seventeen’s lights were on. In fact, every light, in every room was burning and damn near made me slow down. I knew what bothered the owner, why he could not rest, despite the pre-dawn darkness.
I threw his paper and moved down the block. It was my goal to seem nonchalant, pre-occupied with my deliveries, and in no way interested by the glowing home. It personally delighted me this sick cocksucker was tormented. I couldn’t wait to finish my route and give him a call.
***
The payphone at Seven-Eleven on Watson seemed a safe place to call from. I had to assume his rich ass had a litany of ways to trace incoming phone calls and their origins. No reason to take a chance at this point. Besides, there was no reason to believe a suitable compromise couldn’t be reached.
I dialed the number written on the green slip. The phone rang twice before he answered.
“Hello,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m looking for Roland McKnight.”
“This is he,” he said, “and to whom am I speaking?”
“Too soon for that sort of thing, Roland.”
“Who the hell is this? I should call the police.”
“Please, do that. In fact I’ll meet you at headquarters with your impressive computer and together we can share the pretty pictures with all the cops. I think that would make everything right as rain, don’t you, Roland?”
“I want my property returned,” he said. The strong underlying threat had evaporated from his voice.
“Strange as it may sound,” I said, “I want something too, Roland.”
“You fucking scoundrel,” he said.
I recognized his frustration. It was never easy to admit defeat, even more so when your adversary is holding your balls.
“Do you know what they do to sickos like you in the pen, Roland? It isn’t pleasant. I can promise you that. You will be raped and beaten on principle alone. Dicks, broomsticks and toilet plungers will be shoved up your ass more than you will be able to count or remember. You’ll have your teeth busted out with a weight lifting plate so you can suck cock better. There will be no end to the pain. You will be stabbed, have wire coat hangers shoved in your dickhole, and most likely be castrated by the Muslims to atone for your sins.”
I paused to see if he understood. When he didn’t seem to have the capacity to reply, I decided
to give him the singular option he had outside of serving fifty to life.
“I want something and you are going to give it to me. It won’t be extraordinarily difficult for a man such as you, but it won’t be painless either. How’s it going to be, Roland? You ready to quit fucking around or what?”
“Whatever you want,” he said consigned to his loss already, “it’s yours. Name your price.”
“I knew you would understand.”
***
I liked my new van. It had heated seats, a six CD/MP3 compatible HD stereo with Infinity speakers, drop down DVD player, and a monster V-12 diesel engine. It was the van of my dreams.
Cave was certainly impressed by my newfound wealth. It wasn’t everyday some rich schmuck thought so highly of somebody like us to do all this.
Even Balentine couldn’t understand it. Out of the blue, this guy comes into his office and offers him more than double the market value for the Webster route. If he wanted to shit his money down the drain, he was more than happy to assist the rich jerk.
Cave and I were smoking cigars and drinking coffee. A modest celebration to toast my first night as an indie carrier.
“You have got to be the luckiest fucking guy I have ever known,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said enjoying the robust flavor of my Churchill, “after all the shit I’ve been through, I guess I was finally due some good luck.”
###
3 Pigs and A Dog
John sat on the couch with a half-empty whiskey tumbler and stared at the blank television screen. The electric had been shut off three days ago. The gas and water companies threatened to do likewise soon. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered anymore.
Nancy had left him taking their two sons. They had moved back east to live with her parents. He wanted to call them but lacked the courage.
He and Nancy had spent thirteen of their fifteen years inside this home. The boys’ room still waited ready for their return with beds, toys, and a television. The constant loneliness was an insanity for which he had been unprepared.
As he studied his reflection in the TV set, he could pinpoint the exact moment it all began.
***
Marva, the long-seated watchdog of a church secretary, was dying. Despite a church-wide prayer vigil, a miracle did not appear evident. A diagnosis of cirrhosis, in combination with her emphysemic dependence on portable oxygen, made whatever time she had left precious.
In an emergency meeting of deacons and church elders, it was decided her forced retirement would be necessary. John secretly gave her a hundred dollars in Bingo scratch-offs to assuage his own personal guilt in the matter before leaving on vacation with his family.
***
Debbie was a vivacious mother of four genetically perfect girls and a regular Sunday attendee. Her devoted husband David, a local cop, was either constantly at work or at the church. He tithed their family income regularly but still felt money alone an unpleasant offering.
In the summer he mowed the church’s two acres of grass, organized the annual carnival, and gathered volunteers for any number of community improvement projects. In the winter he attached a snowplow blade to his heavy-duty truck and cleared the church lot prior to every service.
Sundays, he drove a church van, chauffeuring the disabled and unable alike to morning services and home again. The guilt he sometimes felt for not being able to do more was a secret he shared with no one.
For all this, he refused compensation, content that what he did was his duty, as if an obedient child to a convalescent parent. How could somebody charge his mother or father for such things? The thought to him was ridiculous.
The church office vacancy was discussed in the brief time Debbie and David shared that evening between giving baths, doing homework and prior to the half-hour family devotional. They decided together that it would be an excellent idea if she applied for the job. The extra money would be helpful now that all the girls attended the church’s parochial school.
***
John returned two weeks later and parked in his reserved space. He was an accountant by trade. Often, he thought, he could have been a better used-car salesman. The church accountant for the last decade, it was his father’s dream come true before he died.
In the name of the church John had made some wise investments. He had foreseen the Internet bubble about to burst and avoided the catastrophe. In turn the church operated in a surplus of black ink never known before. He, also, had collected on the profits.
Through a series of shrewd, but wholly legal tax loopholes, he would have the money to pay for his children’s college education, with more than enough left over to retire early. The interest from well-hidden accounts in the Cayman Islands provided luxuries his current salary could never afford. His recent lavish vacation the most recent of allowances.
John stepped through divided glass doors and walked along the main corridor. The same path that led worshippers to the sanctuary every Sunday led him to work. Prior to the holy room, John made a sharp right turn through a nondescript door with the faded gold stencil OFFICE. Immediately he stood in a perfectly square area where general calls were received and visitors waited to be invited into individual offices. Dubbed the bullpen, he was pleased to see it empty.
The secretary’s desk was vacant as John gathered his mail. Mostly junk Marva would have had the good sense to remove. He would have to teach her replacement to do the same. An exercise in futility, he thought, teaching a temp to do anything more than answer phones. It would take months to find a suitable full-time replacement but for an even lower salary.
At the desk a flush of water could be heard from the communal toilet down the hall. It had been one of Marva’s many chores to keep it clean. He added it to the mental checklist he was already compiling. He enjoyed the thought of such menial duties being passed to some doe-eyed college dropout, watching as her high expectations collapsed. By the end of the week she would use that bathroom to cry.
When he saw Debbie for the first time, radiant in her pink cashmere sweater, at-the-knee-skintight skirt, nude stockings, and bold Italian heels, it was something he would remember forever.
She smiled, still drying her manicured fingertips with an abrasive brown towel, genuinely pleased to see him.
“Welcome back, John,” she said. Before he could refuse her, she surprised him with an enthusiastic hug.
He couldn’t recall saying, “Thank you,” or any litany of pleasantries he stockpiled for such occasions but was certain he had. The rich scent of her perfume tangled in her hair, an aroma of vanilla and wildflowers that made him feel high. So different and brisk than the smell of stale body odor and coffee breath Nancy bid him good-bye with each morning.
Before he realized it, she had left him to answer the phone.
“Administration,” she answered. “How may I serve you?”
***
In the midst of incoming calls, returning phone messages and e-mails, John made every excuse to call for Debbie. Dutifully she came, glad to fetch him coffee, a file, or something he would normally have done for himself. It was his obsession to find anything she could do for him. He breathed in her fragrance every time she came near until he could taste it, lustfully watching the shape of her ass as she walked away.
Pastor Maury interrupted his morning bliss. He insisted there were many fiscal concerns that needed immediate attention. After the deacon’s lunch, they would rendezvous back at his office for a meeting sure to kill the remainder of the day.
He had forgotten about the lunch and knew about all the petty nickel and dime expenditures the pastor would want to review. It was the same thing every Monday. Senseless ramblings by a man concerned with CNN reports over falling interest rates, unrest in the futures markets, and the decline of the GNP when he couldn’t even conceive how real money was made.
Despite himself, he enjoyed these sessions, as the pastor listened to his every word. It didn’t matter what he told him as long as, in the end, i
t reassured him that the church’s bottom line was blessed.
Today, however, he would not be so indulgent.
“I’m concerned,” said Pastor Maury, “in regards to the church’s heavy investment in steel. I saw a disturbing piece recently that foreign competition was intentionally flooding the market with product a fraction of its true cost in order to crash the price. What do you think?”
Pastor Maury reminded John of George Orwell’s Napoleon. The pig that had assumed the dead farmer’s home, wore his clothes, dependent on an ancient entitlement. He knew he was one of the pigs too. The one caught red-cloven, as it were, as he repainted the rules. The difference was his specialty was numbers, not words.
“Pastor,” he said, “our position in steel is solid. The rumors of destabilization by foreign interests are simply that, pure speculation. Wealthy brokerages caught outside the boom are trying to drive the price low, buying out the fools. Inevitably they’ll create new shortages to send the price higher than before, then liquidate all their holdings at an apex value, probably to do it all over again in oil. Trust me, I have my eye on it.”
John’s answer, though full of complimentary buzzwords to satisfy the pastor, was too concise. These sessions were designed to obliterate time, validating the high salary he commanded to be the flock’s direct spiritual intercessor.
John could sense the pastor’s neediness and cut him off by changing the subject. “The office is different with Marva gone.”