The Closer

by Donn Cortez

  The menu was short and expensive. “Don’t worry about the prices,” Nikki said. “My treat.”

  “Sure.” Jack didn’t think much about finances anymore, either. He’d been living off insurance money for the last three years; he had no idea how much was left. He supposed he’d find out when his bank card stopped working.

  “Hmm, I think I’ll have a Caesar salad,” mused Nikki. “I wonder if they make it right at the table? Ever had that?”

  “No.”

  “It’s really good. They make the dressing, too— crush the anchovies, whip the egg right in front of you. Can’t get any fresher than that.”

  Crush. Whip.

  Jack said nothing.

  When the waiter arrived, Nikki asked for a glass of the house red. Jack just shook his head. For him, drinking to loosen up was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

  “Our special tonight is pork medallions with an apricot—”

  “I’ll have that.”

  Nikki glared at him, then said, “I’ll have a Caesar salad and the lobster.”

  “Very good.”

  They sat in awkward silence after the waiter left. They’d been together every day for the past two years, had shared a kind of intimacy and passion most couples never even imagined—but they had never so much as kissed. They were bound together by hatred and loneliness, not love.

  “So, isn’t this better than Burger King?” Nikki finally asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I—” She fumbled for something to say. “I went shopping today. Found some nice shoes.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  She looked back, a kind of pleading in her eyes. It was that look that finally reached him.

  “Oh. That’s …good. That’s good.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, they were a real bargain.”

  A long pause.

  “What kind were they?” Jack asked carefully.

  “What? Oh, they were pumps. Red-and-black pumps, with little bows.”

  “I see.” He tried to smile. “I’m sure they’ll be useful.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice hardened. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be just the thing to grab the attention of the next psycho we torture to death.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh, just forget it,” she snapped. “I mean, what the hell was I thinking? Trying to pretend I had a normal life for a few hours—what a load of bullshit. I’m a thirty-five-year-old whore with a serial killer for a partner, and what’s the only nonpsychotic thing we can find to talk about over dinner? Shoes. Fucking shoes.”

  “Pumps,” he said. “With little bows.”

  She stared at him for a second, then started laughing. He tried to join in, but the best he could manage was a wry smile.

  Nikki laughed until her eyes watered. She dabbed at them with her napkin, trying not to smear her makeup and failing miserably.

  Then she glanced down, and saw that she’d managed to get lipstick on the napkin, too.

  She began to sob. She threw the napkin away convulsively, and it fluttered like a wounded bird to another table and settled over a water glass. She bolted for the restroom.

  Jack just sat there.

  After Deathkiss had sent him a few more details, Djinn-X realized his trip wasn’t going to be the chore he’d first thought. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  He ran through the details in his head during the flight, trying to keep his mind off the fact that he was in an airplane. What he hated about flying wasn’t the danger of a crash; it was the unpredictability of turbulence. You’d be in a nice comfortable seat surrounded by other people, maybe watching a movie, sipping a little wine out of a plastic cup, not so different from being in a theater; and then Wham! the whole building suddenly drops fifty feet straight down.

  After that, you were fucked.

  You couldn’t relax and watch the movie; you didn’t know if you should gulp down that wine and ask for another, or stop drinking altogether ’cause you might wind up spewing all over the stewardess. It felt like a betrayal—like eating a nice dinner at home, everything quiet and peaceful, and suddenly someone punches you in the face for no reason.

  It felt a lot like living with his father.

  He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate. The trip was going to be worth it, for two reasons; one of them was the sheep herself. From the description Deathkiss had sent, she was quite the hottie. She was forty-two but could pass for thirty-five, and she was a real-estate agent. A salesperson.

  He loathed salespeople. They were the real predators of twenty-first century civilization, roaming through the economic jungle with their always-hungry bank accounts, armed with demographic studies and contracts filed to points. Many were baby boomers, flower children who had traded in their ideals for cynicism and greed. They hadn’t just betrayed themselves, they’d betrayed their own children—Generation Xers like himself, not only locked out of a decent job by the population glut of their parents, but ruthlessly targeted by marketing agencies eager to shove products down the throats of their own offspring. Aging parasites consuming their young.

  Doing her would be a real pleasure, but it wasn’t the main reason he was going. No, he would have gone even if she’d turned out to be an eighty-five-year-old widow in a wheelchair, and the reason was simple.

  Trust.

  It was, as far as Djinn-X could tell, the most valuable and fragile of all emotions. All it took was one lie to destroy it—and yet, once established, it could prove to be the strongest emotion of them all, bearing the entire weight of a relationship. It was the sinew that bound together all the higher feelings: friendship, honor, duty, love.

  Djinn-X had few of those feelings in his life. His family certainly hadn’t provided them, and his father’s constant transfers from one army base to another hadn’t let him make any lasting friends, either. The birth of the internet had provided a solution, of sorts; it didn’t matter where you were in the world if your relationships were all in cyberspace.

  But that had proved to be a betrayal, too. He’d reached out to what seemed to be a kindred spirit, a seventeen-year-old girl named Kelly who liked Japanese animation, ska music and Clive Barker. They’d carried on a torrid electronic romance, him in California and her in Idaho, exchanging the most pornographic emails and masturbating together online.

  He thought he was in love. But when he finally caught a Greyhound to meet her, Kelly turned out to be a forty-three-year-old transvestite named Kevin. He claimed he was just as much in love.

  He was a salesperson, of course. And Djinn-X’s first kill.

  After that betrayal, he’d decided he would always be alone. Killing Kevin had placed him in a different subset of humanity: homo homicidus. He’d felt no remorse over the murder, only a deep satisfaction. It was what he’d been born to do, and he plunged into his new career with a sense of purpose he’d never felt before. His day job let him spy on the very people he intended to murder while staying virtually invisible; no one noticed a bike courier except as an obstacle in traffic.

  For a while, it had been enough. But there was an old saying, often repeated on the net: Information wants to be free. One night, after a particularly satisfying kill—an advertising executive who claimed he was responsible for the Mentos commercials—he found himself bragging about his murderous exploits online.

  No one believed him, of course. And why should they? You could claim to be anyone or anything online; he knew that better than anyone.

  But it gnawed at him. The internet had the power to bring together people with similar interests, people who might never meet otherwise. It offered almost instantaneous communication and complete anonymity. More than one underground subculture had discovered it was perfect for distributing information with little chance of reprisal: anarchists, kiddie-porn rings, music and video pirates.

  Why not serial killers?

  Alienated from the culture around him, Djinn-X had decided to create his own. It had taken tim
e, patience, and a winnowing-out process, but he had finally refined his technique to the point where he could guarantee one thing: the person he was communicating with was a killer, just like him. That knowledge, powerful and secret, was the fire that trust was forged in. Djinn-X did not take it lightly.

  Deathkiss was a member of The Pack, now. Djinn-X trusted him, and Deathkiss had to know—deserved to know—he could trust Djinn-X in return.

  It was, after all, the foundation their community was based on.

  Djinn-X took a bus from the airport to the downtown core, then found a pawn shop and paid cash for a used mountain bike. He’d resell it on the way out of town; taking a loss of twenty bucks or so was worth it for the independence it afforded him. Cruising through strange city streets, jumping curbs and dodging traffic, powered by his own muscle; it was the closest he could come to the feeling he got surfing the net. He checked the map Deathkiss had sent him, and headed toward the warehouse district.

  A sheep that was a real-estate agent was sweet, but the fact that she specialized in industrial properties was pure candy. His map had several buildings she represented marked, all big and empty. All he had to do was pick one and make an appointment; she’d show up, probably wearing one of those stupid orange blazers, and unlock the door for him. “Right this way, Mr. Todd. Here’s a great big empty space with no place for me to hide. I bet you could get some really terrific echoes once I start to scream. Don’t worry about the noise; this entire district is deserted after dark. You can do whatever you want… and look! A gigantic industrial sink!”

  There were three possibles, all within a few blocks of each other. The first one had windows lining the entire first floor, and was on a fairly major street. The second was okay, but there was an all-night diner just down the block, a little too close for comfort.

  The third one was an old meat-packing plant, on a dead-end street flanked by an auto parts warehouse and a vacant lot. There were no windows on the first floor but plenty on the second, most of them broken. He found a rickety fire escape, climbed up and peeked into one of them. Nothing but empty space, embroidered with dust and cobwebs. Perfect.

  He climbed down, got on his bike and rode until he found a pay phone. He punched in the number Deathkiss had given him.

  “Hello, Davis Properties.”

  “Hi. I’m interested in one of your warehouses.”

  “Which one?”

  He gave her the address.

  “Oh, yes, the Waterman property. It’s been empty for quite a while, but it’s a prime site.”

  “I’d like to take a look at the inside.”

  “Sure. What time is convenient?”

  “I’m only in town overnight, and I’m in the middle of a business meeting right now. Can you meet me there at, say—nine o’clock?”

  “I think I can manage that. My name is Julie Saunders, by the way.”

  “Hi, Julie. I’m Todd Simkack.”

  “Okay, Mr. Simkack—do you have any other questions, or would you like to discuss this further tonight?”

  “Tonight would be fine.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  He took out his piercings and changed into a suit at the motel, then took a cab to a corner six blocks away from the warehouse. He walked the rest of the way, enjoying the late summer evening. The air smelled of diesel fumes and hot asphalt, but that was always a smell he’d liked; it reminded him of playing basketball on tarmac as a kid, on one of the many army bases his father had been stationed on.

  The sheep was waiting for him outside. She was just as Deathkiss had described her, tall and blond and gorgeous, wearing a miniskirt that didn’t leave much to the imagination. He had a sudden, powerful flash of her on her knees, begging for her life. The smile on his face as he approached her was genuine.

  “Hi, you must be Mr. Simkack.”

  “Call me Todd.”

  “All right, Todd. Right this way—oh, dear. It looks like someone’s broken in. I’m afraid we have problems with squatters sometimes—”

  “That’s all right. They’re not dangerous, are they?”

  “Oh, no, it’s usually just runaways with no place to stay, but be careful where you step. There might be needles.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open. Boy, it sure is dark in here. Is the electricity still on?”

  “Shut up, you piece of shit.”

  “…What?”

  The world suddenly jumped like a bad video edit. Somehow, he was on his back, staring up at a bright light while his muscles twitched uncontrollably. A man’s voice said, “Don’t move. Nikki, get his weapon.”

  Strong, impersonal hands found the knife tucked in the small of his back, under his shirt. The voice behind the flashlight said, “Do you recognize this moment?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he gasped. “Look, if you want to rob me—”

  “This is the moment of control. The pivot that your relationship with the victim turns on, when everything changes. Except this time, you’re on the other side.”

  “Deathkiss?” he whispered.

  “No. I’m the one who killed him.”

  A familiar feeling settled slowly in Djinn-X’s gut. Betrayal.

  “And now you’re gonna kill me, right?”

  “No. I’m not going to kill you. I just want to talk to you….”

  ROAD RAGE: I think we have a situation that needs our attention: The Closer.

  GOURMET: I agree. He’s a threat that should be dealt with.

  We’re fortunate he hasn’t caught any of us yet.

  ROAD RAGE: What if he does? He could learn all our secrets.

  PATRON: Then we’ll just have to catch him first….

  INTERLUDE

  Dear Electra:

  I invited Sarah over to watch some scary movies with me and Simone and Jessica. I didn’t know if she even watched movies, but she does—she just turns on the captioning on the DVD player, which made me feel stupid because it’s so obvious. And besides, she’s really good at lip-reading.

  We rented a couple of slasher flicks and watched them in the basement with the lights off. We spent more time laughing than being scared—some of these movies are just so dumb! I mean, you’d think that if a psychopath was going around killing people, you wouldn’t hang out in the graveyard or the deserted house or wherever—you’d leave, and you’d take your friends with you. You wouldn’t go wandering off alone, and you sure wouldn’t go exploring any dark basements where you heard a weird noise.

  We all agreed it was pretty insulting; I mean, it’s always teenagers they show doing these incredibly moronic things.

  Jessica pointed out that it wasn’t just teenagers— it was horny teenagers. Anybody making out might as well paint a bull’s-eye on their naked butt.

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “What are they trying to tell us about sex?”

  “Don’t have it unless you want to die,” Simone said.

  “Or use protection,” said Jessica. “Like, heavily-armed protection.”

  “Kids!” I said, doing a fake-announcer voice. “Are you having unsafe sex? Are you doing it in deserted summer camps and abandoned factories? Use our special psycho-resistant condoms! Personally approved by Freddy, Jason and Chucky!”

  “Yeah!” Sarah said, laughing. “With a little hockey mask for the head!”

  “And the Freddy one could be made of, like, burned flesh,” Jessica said.

  “Eeww, GROSS!” I’m not sure who said that—I think it was everyone.

  Well, Electra, the discussion got pretty weird after that. By the time we were done we’d designed a whole line of slasher-movie sex supplies, including: the Chucky blow-up doll decoy, good for a temporary diversion while you escape (made of special slash-resistant rubber); the Freddy vibrator, in orange-and-green stripes; and Jason sex cream (keeps you coming back for more—even if you died in the last movie!).

  I’m really glad Jessica and Simone like Sarah. It would bite if they decided she wasn’t cool enough
to hang with—I mean, not that any of us are that cool either, but sometimes Jessica can be funny. We used to hang around with Jenny Birch all the time, and then she and Jessica got into a fight. Jessica started saying all these bad things about her, and then Simone was, and I guess I did too. I don’t know why; I don’t even remember what the fight was about. We don’t hang around with Jenny anymore.

  Anyway, I’m glad Sarah fits in with us. If you don’t have a group to hang with at school, it can suck—I remember when I first moved here, it was really hard to make friends. I wound up joining Girl Guides, which is where I met Jessica and Simone.

  Sometimes I look around at the different groups at school, and I imagine they’re all from different planets; the Jocks, the Brains, the Druggies, the Goths. I wonder what it’s like on their worlds, and what it would be like to go there. Weird, huh, Electra?

  Some people don’t have their own planet, though. The girl that’s really fat, the guy that’s really dumb, anyone too ugly or clueless to make friends. I see them in the halls and they make me feel sad and angry at the same time. Sad because they’ll probably always be alone, and angry because no one even tries to be nice to them.

  Including me.

  Maybe Uncle Rick was wrong. I shouldn’t be a writer, I should be Ruler of The World; then I could fix everything and everyone would be happy.

  Right.

  Maybe that’s why people become writers in the first place—World Ruler isn’t really an option, so they make up a world they can rule instead. A place they can fix all the mistakes they can’t fix in real life.

  Hmm. I don’t know if that’s cool or pathetic. What do you think, Electra?

  I THINK YOU ARE A BRILLIANT AND TALENTED HUMAN BEING.

  Why, thank you, Electra. You’re too kind.

  FURTHERMORE, EVEN THOUGH I AM ONLY AN ELECTRONIC FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION, I AM IN AWE AT THE BEAUTY OF YOUR PHYSICAL FORM. CLEARLY YOU ARE A SUPERIOR EXAMPLE OF HUMANITY AND ANY MALE WOULD BE PROUD TO GROVEL AT YOUR FEET.

  Sigh. Now, if only Uncle Rick were as easy to convince.