And If I Die

by John Aubrey Anderson

  When the front door closed, the man in the glasses used the edge of the table to pop the cap off the beer and said, “Take your clothes off.”

  The woman, who had yet to speak, pushed a thick manila envelope across the table. “You’ll need this.”

  The man ignored the envelope and waved the woman out of the chair. “Clothes first.”

  She stood up and put a handgun—a .22 automatic with a Carswell silencer— on the table.

  The average citizen has never seen a pistol with a silencer, much less carried one, but average citizens don’t serve on congressional committees or set up meetings with professional killers. The man pulled the pistol out of her reach then ignored it.

  Sheldon Aacock was two weeks away from his thirty-fourth birthday—a significant milestone for a man of his calling. His longevity was, in a small way, attributable to his physical makeup; his height and build were average, his face was ordinary and easily disguised. To an even greater degree, he was alive because he possessed an overwhelming personality trait, something far stronger than his physical and intellectual attributes, which served him well—he held all humans in contempt.

  The woman started to disrobe. She wasn’t wearing jewelry or carrying a purse; his orders had been explicit. “Everything?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He was watching her hands, making sure that she didn’t try to palm or discard anything. Unlike Jimmy Palmertree, he didn’t care that the woman was well on her way to being nude—men in his profession who allowed themselves to be distracted by women died untimely deaths.

  For her part, the woman wasn’t interested in trying to entice the man; he was already corrupted. The Jimmy Palmertrees of the world—the committed believers who might allow themselves to be tempted—were the ones she wanted to lure into her web.

  When the woman was finished undressing, the man let her stand by the table while he pat-searched every item of her clothing.

  After he satisfied himself that there were no electronic devices sewn into her garments, he shook the contents of his sack onto the table—sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a pair of tennis shoes. “Put these on.” He waited until she was dressed in her substitute clothes and the others were sacked up and placed behind the bar then said, “Be assured of one thing . . . if this is a setup, I will kill your only surviving son. When he is dead, I will come to you . . . and I will make sure you plead for death long before I grant it.”

  The woman sat down at the table. “Save your threats for someone stupid enough to set you up. Let’s get on with it.”

  The man made a mental note the woman was ten blocks from the nearest white person and she wasn’t nervous. “How’d you find me?”

  She could speak without fear; there was no one to whom he could divulge the truth. “I’m on the Intelligence Committee. I know people who know your name.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  She told him what he already knew. “I am both crooked and evil, and I make it my business to associate myself with people who will tell me what I want to know in exchange for money. You don’t need to know who they are.”

  The man was confident she was telling the truth, but there was something that didn’t fit. “What do you want?”

  “I want three people found and killed.”

  “And you picked me because . . . ?”

  “Because you’re black. I’ve used four men trying to get this done—white men—and they’ve all failed or been killed.”

  “Who killed them?”

  “You don’t need to know that either.”

  “And being black is going to make me more successful?”

  “Two of those I want dead are black. Being black will let you go where the first four could not.”

  Things were beginning to make sense. The people Aacock relied on for information, those who were willing to market truth in the shadowlands, told him the woman possessed and demonstrated a hatred for all black people. He didn’t care who the woman hated—whether or not he agreed to kill the men for her would ultimately come down to how much risk was involved balanced against how much money she would pay.

  “You want the ones who killed your son,” he said.

  “I do.” The woman wasn’t surprised at the man’s statement. He’d had ten days to look into her background.

  “It’s been eight years. What do you have on them?”

  She motioned at the envelope. “Everything’s there, and it’s not much. Almost nothing is known of the white man. The ones who were present when my son was killed heard his voice, but he didn’t have an identifiable accent. None of them saw his face, and he was described as about six feet tall with an average build. From what people have been able to piece together, he gave every indication of being familiar with firearms, indicating a military background, or possibly law enforcement, or possibly neither. Personally, I don’t think we can find him, except through the two black men. Neither of the Negroes have any surviving relatives, but that old man has people—black and white—who are unalterably loyal to him.”

  “That’s everything?”

  She nodded.

  What she had was next to nothing. He said, “Give me two weeks to look into this. If you haven’t heard from me in fourteen days, I’m not interested.”

  “You should know that I will make this well worth your while.”

  Aacock wasn’t interested in talking about money until he knew what the job entailed. He asked, “Do you want to change into your other clothes before I let those two back in here?”

  “Yes.”

  He said, “You’ve got three minutes,” and walked out.

  When Boxer came through the door, the woman was dressed in her original clothes and sitting at the table with the sack in front of her.

  The man with the gun had walked off down the street, and Boxer had the two hundred dollars in his pocket. He had nothing to gain by catering to the woman. “Your time’s up. Get out before somebody around here sees you.”

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “Passed out on the sidewalk.” He jerked a thumb at the door. “Now, git.”

  The woman moved her hand from behind the sack and pointed the .22 at the man’s chest. “Come over here and sit down.”

  Boxer took one glance at the silencer and thought, I ain’t ever lettin’ another white woman in here as long as I live. He said, “I knew you were trouble.”

  “This is not trouble. This is just a precaution.”

  Boxer set his mouth and crossed his arms. “You won’t shoot me.”

  She slid out of the chair. “I don’t want to, but please believe that I will.” She used her most winsome voice. “I can tie you up to make sure I’m not followed, or I can shoot you in the knee.” She stood up and pointed at the chair. “Come on . . . sit down . . . make this easy on both of us.”

  Boxer cursed, but he sat down. If I ever let another honky in this place, I’ll save them the trouble and shoot myself. “What now?”

  She handed him a long strip of material she’d cut from the sweatpants. “Tie your right ankle to the chair.” He groused and grumbled, but he did as he was told.

  “Now the other one.”

  When he finished she had him put his hands behind the chair back and she tied his wrists together. Next she secured both of his elbows snugly to the chair.

  “Look, lady, I don’t care anything about followin’ you. Just take whatever you want an’ get out.”

  She took a small towel from the bar and said, “Open your mouth.”

  He swore again then said, “Don’t be stupid, lady. I ain’t gonna scream like some scared little girl, okay. Just leave me alone an’ get outta my place.”

  “Open your mouth,” she repeated. “The sooner I get this done, the sooner I’ll be away from here.”

  Boxer sighed loudly and opened his mouth. She stuffed the towel in it then tied it in place with one of the makeshift ropes. She smiled the Grace Kelly smile and asked, “All comfy now?”

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nbsp; Boxer glared at her without trying to speak. The woman was nuts.

  She cocked her head and gave him a flirtatious grin. “Do you still think I’m trouble?” She winked at him and said, “You have no idea.”

  Boxer glared at her without trying to respond.

  He thought he was finished with her when she pulled her hat on and left, but she was back seconds later, dragging the drunk customer. When the unconscious man’s hands were tied, she pushed him against the wall and straightened. “There.” She smiled at Boxer again.

  When the woman slipped out and dragged the drunk back into the bar, Aacock was well hidden in the rubble across the street. The killer wasn’t afraid of being identified by the barkeep; in an hour or two the myopic baseball fan’s persona would vanish forever. The woman, however, hadn’t been as well disguised. Aacock was confident that the bar owner and his customer were as good as dead.

  When the woman walked behind the bar and returned with an ice pick and a small knife, the expression in Boxer’s eyes went from anger to anxiety. He fixed his gaze on the knife, and began to shake his head back and forth. Distorted sounds fought to push their way through the gag. The worst was still to come.

  The woman waited until her captive was looking at her face—and tried to explain what she was. “This shell of a woman you are looking at belongs to us. She gave herself to us, and she resides in this body, but she hasn’t made a decision in decades. Because we cannot allow you to tell anyone she has been here, we are going to kill you.”

  Boxer couldn’t move for a long moment. He stared into the uncaring face and tried to find a glimmer of compassion. Reality finally fought its way past numbing shock, and he coughed when he tried to spit out the gag.

  “It has been our experience that we will derive more pleasure from what we plan to do if we let you know precisely what you are about to experience,” she said.

  Boxer shook his head vehemently, and the sounds coming from his throat increased in pitch.

  “You wouldn’t tell anyone?” she purred.

  Boxer tried desperately to make himself understood; a frenzy of head shaking accompanied the sounds.

  The woman’s hand moved toward him and he froze. She touched the ice pick to his face and used its point to trace a circle around one of his eyes. “It doesn’t really matter, you know. The pleasure of seeing you die is not something we would deny ourselves.”

  The expression in Boxer’s eyes reflected unrestrained panic.

  The woman put the two implements on the table, then tilted the man’s chair back until it was flat on the floor. She looked down at him and said, “You need to be thinking about what dying will be like. And you need to be aware that your fear of death will soon subjugate itself to the pain we are going to inflict upon you.

  “Scientifically speaking, we have found people are most distressed when they anticipate pain in areas they can’t see.” The voice came from a face devoid of expressed emotion, pronouncing each word as if lecturing a class of first-year medical students. “We will, therefore, start with the bottoms of your feet.”

  Pictures of what the thing would do to the bottoms of his feet flashed on the screen of his mind. Boxer jerked and heaved, straining at the ropes, grunting and sweating, trying to rock the chair from side to side. Sweat poured from his face. The man’s once-powerful body couldn’t save him; years of tending bar had done nothing but weaken his physical condition. The gag wouldn’t allow him to breathe well, and he was exhausted within seconds. He looked into the death mask and tears streamed from his eyes; a small, pitiful sound came over and over from the gagged mouth. “Eeee. Eeee. Eeee.”

  “Please? Please what?” the voice mocked him. “So you will know how fortunate you are, let me tell you that what is left of this woman’s soul would gladly exchange places with you.”

  The woman stepped away from his face and began to unlace his shoes. When his socks were tossed aside, she ran her manicured fingernails across the bottom of his feet. Boxer watched the woman reach for the pick and began to whimper.

  The voice said, “Now let’s see if I can remember the words to that little rhyme.” As it touched its victim’s toes with the sharp tip, the monster whispered, “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe . . .”

  The tip of the pick traced a casual arc from Boxer’s toes to the back of his heel and paused long enough to allow the man to suck in his breath.

  In one way, Boxer’s choice to live a sedentary lifestyle stood him in good stead; his heart lasted only four minutes before it burst. However, had he any inkling of what was waiting for him in eternity, he would’ve chosen to spend ten thousand years being tortured by the demon.

  Aacock had been in his hiding place thirty minutes when the grungy neon sign in the bar’s window went out. Seconds later, the door opened and the woman shuffled out. She turned north toward Lexington. Aacock waited until the flames were showing through the window across the street and walked south.

  The fire department arrived in time to watch the fire burn itself out, but they didn’t linger. A week earlier, these same firemen had depended on the Maryland National Guard to protect them while they fought fires started by uncontrollable mobs—the residents of this neighborhood who hadn’t shot at them threw bottles and bricks. The firemen sprayed a little water on what was left of the building, recovered two charred bodies, and beat a retreat back to friendly territory.

  Daybreak found several shabbily dressed black men rummaging through the still-smoldering rubble of what had been Boxer’s Tavern. The pickings were lean, but each of them had found at least one unbroken bottle of booze. All the searchers, with the exception of one, were combing through the wreckage near where the liquor had been displayed. The loner, who was apparently new at scavenging, was in the middle of the building. While the others were absorbed in their quest, the outsider pried up a charred tabletop and found a man’s toe. The searcher, without attracting the attention of the others, flicked the toe into a pile of glowing coals. When he was sure the evidence was burned beyond recognition, he shambled away.

  She picked up the private line and his voice said, “I’ll do it.”

  “Good. Do we need to meet?”

  “No. I’ll tell you how to get the money to a drop.”

  She had to sound as if the money mattered. “How much?”

  He quoted a figure ten times higher than what any of the previous four had asked. “That’s exorbitant.”

  “I’ll use half of it for bribes. Take it or leave it.” Bribes would consume a portion of the money, but most of it would be used to allow him to hide in relative comfort where the woman could not find him.

  The woman continued the pretense of negotiating. “Half now . . . the other half when it’s done.”

  “No . . . all now.” Nothing about his profession fostered trust in his fellow humans. “When this is over, I plan to disappear.”

  “How will we stay in touch?”

  “We won’t.” Aacock could understand killing a potential witness and destroying the evidence, but staying in a dangerous place to torture a stranger made no sense. He had to assume the woman was demented, and therefore, grossly unpredictable . . . and unpredictable people were dangerous. “You’ll hear from me when I find them . . . not before . . . and never again.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “This Moses Washington has what it takes to stay quiet and not attract attention. If they’re well hidden, it could take a year.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Roosevelt Edwards was the overseer at the Parker Gin, and as such, he stood on the top rung of Allen County’s black hierarchy, right alongside the black preachers.

  Roosevelt’s house sat beside the Mossy Lake road where it ran through the Parkers’ woods, about a mile east of Cat Lake. On this day, as on most others, Roosevelt left his pickup at home and walked to the gin. Dawn’s pink sky was at his back, and row after row of ankle-high cotton stretched as far as he could see on both sides of the road. He had a full Monday wait
ing on him at the gin—walking and praying comforted him.

  He was approaching the Cat Lake bridge, enjoying the early-morning sounds, praying and planning his day, when he caught a whiff of smoke. On his left, a short way off the south edge of the road, a dozen century-old pecan trees stood back from the lake, offering protection to a cabin as old as they were. The cabin in the pecan trees belonged to Mose Washington, but Mose hadn’t lived there for more than eight years. Roosevelt stopped and looked toward the trees.

  In front of the cabin, near the lake, smoke from a small fire yielded to the stir of air and drifted toward the road. A black man was standing several feet from the fire, his hat in his hand, staring at three small gravestones.

  In the Mississippi Delta, drifting black folks were a fact of life, but the ones who knew about that area’s history stayed clear of the Parker plantation; the narrow strip of land running from Cat Lake to Parkers’ Woods had a bloody history. In the fifteen-year span between 1945 and 1960, a dozen people had died violent deaths there.

  Roosevelt had worked for the Parkers for fifty years. He hired on in the early days—back before Mose became Mr. Bobby Lee Parker’s overseer—and worked his way up to be Mose’s right-hand man. The two black men worked side by side at the Parker Gin for more than forty years. When Mose stepped down, Roosevelt took over as the operations manager.

  Roosevelt felt blessed to be working for the Parkers; they were fine white folks—but they weren’t receptive to having strangers stay on their land uninvited. The small handful of travelers who didn’t know any better than to stop near Cat Lake were sent on their way by Mr. Roosevelt Edwards.

  Mose was the finest man, black or white, Roosevelt had ever known, and when he disappeared the gin foreman adopted the little house as his responsibility; he turned off the road to see what was going on. As Roosevelt walked up, the man by the gravestones turned to watch him. When the big man got close, the stranger bowed slightly. “Mornin’, uncle.”