The Death Panel: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness

by Tom Piccirilli

  “Right this way.” She led him through the near-pitch darkness and around a bend, the chirp of crickets all around them and the smell of burning charcoal resonating. The sights, sounds, and smells of summer were everywhere.

  They approached a trailer not far from his own. Through the windows, he noticed only a faint flashing light of bluish gray. Probably the TV.

  Extending an arm, she pulled open the door and waited for him to enter first. If he was a trusting man, he may have walked on in. But he wasn’t. He didn’t know her and he didn’t know where this door would lead.

  He shifted all of his weight onto his right foot and looked her in the eye. “After you.”

  She didn’t argue, which was a good sign. She gave him a look that could’ve only been described as sheer apathy, and stepped inside.

  Guard up, he followed her and turned to glance over his shoulder as the door swung shut. Inside, he found a quaint living space not unlike his own. The extraordinarily burly gentleman slumped and sleeping in a stained, torn armchair gave him one pause. Arnie halted step. The man, snoring peacefully in front of a baseball game, sat surrounded by empty cans. An eyesore of a human being, he took up most of the limited living space.

  Arnie cleared his throat. “Who’s this?” he said, motioning toward their sleeping host.

  “My husband.”

  Blank, Arnie nodded. “Uh-huh …” A punchline would’ve been nice.

  “I brought you here tonight because I was hoping you’d work your magic on him.”

  He laughed. “’Scuse me?”

  “Well, I know what you do. I mean, I’ve seen … I mean, I …” She paused. “Okay, look. Just tell me what you need, all right? If you need knives, I’ve got knives. If you need tools, I think there’s a set collecting dust around here somewhere. If you need money, that may be an issue, but I can make you happy in ways that money can’t, if you know what I mean.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down,” he said, both hands raised. “What the hell are you talkin’ ’bout?” His head was spinning.

  She rolled her eyes and suddenly seemed rather exhausted. “I’m guessing you weren’t the brightest in your class, were you,” she said, almost under her breath. “I’m saying I’d like for you to kill my husband.” Then she exhaled. “Please.”

  Eyes bulging wide, he looked around nervously. Innocently. “What makes you think I’m the person for something like that?”

  “Oh, come on now. Let’s not play games.”

  “I’m not the one playin’ games here, honey.”

  “I thought I was rather straightforward in my request.”

  “Are you nuts? What if this guy wakes up?”

  “He won’t wake up for hours. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? Right.”

  “So? Are you gonna do this or not?”

  “I still don’t understand why you chose me.”

  Eyebrows raised, she smiled wide and looked around. Like she knew something. “Let’s just say I’ve seen things.”

  “What things.”

  Hands on hips, she eyed the ceiling, as though she were searching her memory. “Well,” she said, “I’ve seen a certain middle-aged gentleman in a certain local trailer park recently unload something very large. Something wrapped up tight in a blue tarp. Something that left behind a small puddle of deep red. I’ve also seen said gentleman bring home a young woman earlier this evening—a young woman I’m willing to bet is in the very early stages of decomposition as we speak.”

  He burned inside, growing hotter with every word she spoke. He didn’t know what to say or do next and judging by the way she studied him, he was growing redder by the second.

  “Look,” she said, her tone returning to casual, “I don’t care about either of them. I don’t care about them and I don’t care about any of the others, although I’m sure there’s plenty. Just do this for me and we never have to see each other again. I’ll even take care of the body. Deal?”

  He blinked. Thought hard. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

  “Not all of us can muster the nerve to do something like this.”

  He didn’t like this. But he really didn’t like leaving her dissatisfied, especially with her knowing what she knew. And what she wanted really wouldn’t take much. The guy looked half-dead already.

  “Is he drugged or something?” Arnie asked, eyeing him curiously.

  “He’s self-medicated.”

  He nodded, as though he understood.

  Hours passed, or so it would seem. He stood, silently questioning. Weighing. Contemplating. Gaining his nerve. The two-tined meat fork lying on the kitchen counter was the first thing he saw when he glanced away from them. The points were long and looked razor sharp. Bits of food had hardened along the slim, smooth shaft, as though it had been cooked with recently. Still uncertain, he reached for it with an unsteady left hand and grasped it by the handle. “Cool if I use this?” he asked, holding it up.

  “Have at it,” she said, gesturing with both hands.

  She stood, turned the television up all the way—presumably to cover the screams of the poor bastard she was so desperate to get rid of—and moved a few paces to the opposite side of the trailer. She stopped outside the bathroom door and watched, both hands joined at her waist.

  * * * *

  Arnie took one final look at her, figured what the hell, and then acted.

  Clutching the giant fork by the handle, he rushed forth, storming straight ahead and grunted as he gave a powerful thrust. The double spikes impaled the sleeping sloth at the throat and continued straight through, entering the padded back of the recliner, and stopping there.

  When Arnie pulled away, it was like it didn’t happen. The guy didn’t move a muscle. Not one. Didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t stir. Arnie wondered if his death was instantaneous. Wondered if the life of this sweaty, slovenly beast was gone the very second the cold steel penetrated him.

  Now feeling the rush of his heart and savoring the adrenaline, Arnie laughed. Gave his own thigh a good, hard slap. At ease, he stood tall, believing it was all over.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because the poor, nameless bastard started to twitch …

  … and jerk …

  … and cough …

  … and gurgle …

  … and blood shot from his mouth by the gallon.

  He tried to move, to stand, but he was pinned to the back of his seat by the giant fork jutting out of his throat. Eyes wide and filled with terror, jaw hanging, he kicked both legs wildly and used his hands to clutch his own throat, as though he were choking. And then his entire body shook violently and if Arnie didn’t know better, he would’ve thought he were witnessing a prison death by execution.

  The efforts of this man were great and strong enough to free him from his blood-soaked seat. To Arnie’s surprise, this very large, uncontrollable man was up and on his feet, thrashing about, both arms flailing as he suffered through what had to have been an insufferable agony.

  Windows shattered. Dishes broke. Pots and pans shot through the air. Everything around them was tossed about. It was chaos. Pure bedlam. Arnie ducked, taking cover by lifting both arms above his head.

  And then it all stopped when he fell back into his chair, gave a few more coughs and gurgles, and died.

  Arnie panted, hoping that it was really all over. He kept both eyes on the recliner, knowing that if this madness saw a second course, he wanted to be ready for it.

  He heard a click. The roar of the television faded. When he turned, Nora was standing before the set. In all the mayhem, he’d forgotten she was there—forgot she was the one who requested this, even.

  “Wow,” she said, turning to face all corners of the room—or rather what was left of it.

  Arnie said nothing. There was nothing to say. He just needed a moment to collect himself.

  It startled him back into the world in which he lived when she got down on her knees before him. When he saw her arched brow
and the look in her eyes, he knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Hold on a second,” he said, placing his hands on top of hers when she tugged at his belt.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that … See, well … There’s something I just recently learned. Something about myself.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off of his. “What.”

  He smiled. “I like ’em without a pulse.”

  Before he reached down and held her head in both his hands, he saw the exact moment she understood—saw it in her eyes as they bulged wide. And then he twisted.

  Pop!

  As he ducked behind neighboring trailers on his way home, Nora’s cold body in both arms, he remembered the empty eye socket that would be waiting for him when he walked through the door. Smiling, he thought of what he’d be doing on this night for the very first time. That smile grew bigger and wider when he realized there’d be something else he’d be doing for the very first time.

  A threeway.

  The Name Game

  Scott Nicholson

  * * *

  When Monroe awoke, he felt as if he’d been dropped headfirst from the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

  He moaned and rolled over into a stack of moldy cardboard and newspapers. The avenue tasted of Queens, smog stung to the ground by the long rains of the week before. A car horn bleated, amplified by the brick canyons so that the noise rattled Monroe’s eardrums. He tried to peel back his eyelids so that the brilliant green in his vision could be scrubbed away by the orange crash of daylight.

  Damn this city, he thought, each word a hammer blow. And since he was bothering to think, he figured he might as well try to remember. That was a little harder. He was on his knees, supporting himself against the slick skin of a Dumpster, by the time he got past the previous two seconds and on into the last few hours.

  It was morning. The aroma of bagels and coffee drifted from some back door along the alley, fighting with the stench of gutter garbage before mingling into a deeper smell of rot. And if this was morning, then Monroe was—

  Late.

  He was supposed to catch a pre-dawn flight, to be out of town before another sorry New York sun rose. No, he wasn’t supposed to catch the flight. He remembered harder, and more painfully. Robert Wells was supposed to catch that flight.

  Robert Daniel Wells, his new identity, a boring tourism official from Muncie. The Feds had set it up that way. A tourism official could go places, sleep in a few motels, get lost in America’s excess. Los Angeles for a convention to pitch movie locations, then Oregon for a meeting of the Christmas Tree Growers Association, zippp down to, where was it? Oh, yeah, Flagstaff, Arizona, to sell Muncie to wealthy retirees. Good old Indiana, that scenic destination, that mecca of the masses.

  Dumb damned Feds. Like Joey Scattione couldn’t figure that one out. With Joey’s resources, Monroe was meat no matter what identity they gave him. What he needed was a new face, new bones, a new brain, because his brain was halfway down the back of his neck. He touched the welt on his head.

  Ouch.

  He struggled to his feet, took a step, and nearly tripped over a pile of rags. The pile stirred, a bottle rolled to the asphalt, and a bleary eye opened amid a dark crack of cloth.

  “Suh—sorry,” Monroe said. He waited a moment for the bum to acknowledge him, but the eye closed, extinguished like an ember dropped in mud.

  His hand went to his back pocket. No surprise, his wallet was gone. It had contained nothing but cash, a few hundred bucks. No biggie. He hadn’t dared carry his fake IDs in there.

  Monroe took a couple more steps. Even if he missed the flight, he still had the ticket. They’d let him catch a later one. If he had a connector in St. Louis, maybe he’d slip out of the terminal and throw Robert Wells in the ditch somewhere, dig up some new papers. It could be done. Easier that way than screwing around and counting on the Feds.

  That’s why he’d went alone. With a spook escort, Joey’s people would have spotted Monroe a mile away. Feds’ shoes sparkled like skyscrapers, and they always looked as if they should be wearing sunglasses. Might as well carry a sandwich sign that said, “Hey, bad guys of the world! I’m a spook.”

  So Monroe had talked them into playing it his way. Take up the tourism official act, gawk at the skyscrapers, do the same kind of dumb things an Indiana bumpkin would do. Like try to catch a cab at four in the morning.

  Whoever had clobbered him must have been an amateur. Certainly wasn’t any of Joey’s muscle. Joey would want Monroe whole, uninjured, wide awake, and ready for some slow face-to-face. Joey’s people would show Monroe ten thousand ways to die, all at the same time, and none of them easy. Joey would want it all on videotape, since he couldn’t be there in the flesh.

  And the Feds, they weren’t in for the double-cross. Not only were they too dumb, Monroe had given them the slip back at the hotel at around midnight. Sure, they probably would have a spook or two haunting the airports, but they wouldn’t want to make a scene. Better to let Monroe get out of town and track him later.

  Monroe neared the end of the alley, the traffic thick on the street in front of him. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalks, hustling off to make the nine o’clock ritual. He felt better already, though his pulse was playing “The War Of 1812” in his temples. Safety in numbers, and nowhere were numbers more numerous than on a Manhattan street.

  He attempted to whistle, but his throat was too dry. He put on his indifferent grimace, the mask that New York wore, and slouched into the crowd. He fell in behind a woman walking her poodle. He nearly stepped on the poodle when it stopped to relieve itself. The woman pretended not to notice either Monroe or the steaming brown pile on the concrete.

  Monroe reached inside his jacket, to the inner pocket. He stopped. The ticket was gone.

  Someone had taken his papers. The social security card, the Indiana driver’s license, the credit card made out to “Robert Wells,” even a blood donor card. All the FBI’s clever forgeries, along with four more bills, were now in the hands of some idiot mugger. Or mugger of idiots, whichever way you wanted to look at it.

  Monroe had been so wrapped up in worrying about Joey Scattione that he hadn’t considered falling victim to a less ruthless and much more random predator. His predicament hit him like a wrong-way cab. If he were forced to be Monroe Hartbarger, he wouldn’t last a half a day in this city. Not with Joey’s people on the hunt. And Monroe Hartbarger at the moment was broke, no way out, no standby plane ticket, no bulletproof vest. No gun.

  “Out of the way, dude,” growled a kid with a skateboard under his arm. The kid shoved past Monroe, greasy black hair shining in the lights from a nearby shop window. Monroe moved against the glass, out of the main crush of foot traffic. He glanced at the passing faces, on the lookout for Joey’s people.

  Calm down, take a breath. Think.

  Thinking brought the headache roaring back. Goon must have used a tire iron.

  He fumbled for a cigarette, then remembered that Robert Wells didn’t smoke. But he wasn’t Robert Wells anymore. He searched for the secret folds in his coat, the place where he’d kept his Monroe effects. Because he’d planned all along that, once he blew this town and shook the spooks, he’d return to being Monroe, at least until he could scrape together a new identity. He didn’t have much faith in the Feds and their “witless protection program.”

  But the worse got worser. His fingers came away empty. The mugger had taken his Monroe stash, along with the extra fifty he’d tucked back for hard times. Monroe closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, inhaling car exhaust as if the carbon monoxide would dull his headache.

  I’d rather be anywhere than right here, on Joey’s turf, in Joey’s town. Hell, I’d even take Muncie. At least in Muncie, the only thing I’d have to worry about would be dying of boredom. And I hear that takes YEARS …

  Voices to his right pulled him back to the morning street. Two people were shouting, pointing into the shop win
dow. In New York, two people talking on the street either meant a drug deal, a sex solicitation, or the beginning of a murder. But these seemed like ordinary folks, the kind who talked to windows instead of invisible demons.

  Monroe looked into the storefront. It was a pawn shop, bars thick across the window, a bank of surveillance cameras eyeing the street like hookers on payday. A Sanyo television lit up the window, the flickering images reflected in the glass. It took Monroe a moment to register what he was seeing.

  A shot of the East River, a harried-looking reporter trying vainly to control her hair in the breeze, a cutaway to emergency response and fire vehicles, then a wide shot of Kennedy Airport. Back to the river, a small orange speck in the water. Zoom in. A torn life jacket.

  A computer graphic popped up in the corner of the screen, the station logo a leering eye. Underneath, in slanted red letters, “Flight 317 Crash.”

  Poor bastards, Monroe thought. Imagine what kind of headache you get from dropping a mile-and-a-half from the sky.

  He was turning back to the street, his pity for the victims already fading, when the number “317” bounced back into his roaring head. He froze, got shoved by a balding man in a suit, yelled at by a package courier.

  317. Hadn’t that been his flight? The one that was supposed to whisk Robert Wells to a new life?

  He went into the pawn shop. A bank of TVs filled one wall, half of them tuned to news coverage of the crash. The anchor had her hair in place now, must have snagged some hair spray during the cutaway. The computer graphic now read “Live!” under the station logo, in those same blood-red letters.

  “We’re at the scene of the crash of NationAir Flight 317, which plummeted shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport this morning—“

  “What a mess, huh?” said a voice behind Monroe. He thought at first it was one of Joey’s boys. But it was the pawn shop proprietor, a small man with glasses and a scar across one cheek. His nose looked like an unsuccessful prizefighter’s.