by Avery Stites
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Number twenty-six, you have been out on your own for quite some time, now,” the man said. “A month without contact is too much.”
I nodded. “I was-
He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “We know all about what happened with you and your brother, number twenty-six. There is no need to explain.”
He reached in his pocket and extracted a cell phone. “This is your new phone. Same as last time. One number; work only. Understand?”
I nodded.
“We have work lined up for you. But we also know that you need to address the situation with your brother before you will be ready, mentally.”
“I can work,” I said.
“No, you can’t. You won’t be prepared.” He stared directly in my eyes. “Besides, look at you now. I know what you are doing. You have one thing on your mind. You must attend to that, first.” He extracted a piece of paper from his pocket. “And we are going to help you with that, as a show of good faith.” He walked over and handed me the cell phone and paper.
“On that paper is an address. At that address you will find your brother.”
I had to ask. “How did you find him?”
“Number twenty-six, we have eyes and feet everywhere. After your inbound call, shortly before this, the wheels were set in motion.”
“I see.”
“Before I go, let me make something clear. You almost died because you let emotion get in the way of your decision making. You didn’t see that until it was too late. You let a phone with a lot of sensitive information on the SIM card fall potentially the wrong hands. We were able to track it down, but to repeat this scenario would be a fatal mistake going forward. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Remember this: Gerald Holley is your brother by blood. But he is no longer your brother.”
“I understand.”
The man nodded at me, in turn. “You have two days, and then you will receive a call. It needs to be finished by the time you receive the call.” He turned and walked away, between rows of storage units. It almost felt like I was imagining things, but I looked down at the phone and piece of paper in my hand and knew that I wasn’t. The address was across the country; I turned and put the bag of equipment back in the storage unit. I had a safe deposit box in the city in which I was headed. The only thought on my mind was that I had forty-eight hours to finish the worst part of my life.
Chapter Eleven
I regrouped and prepared at my house; I showered, dressed, ate something and did some research on the address. It was in West Hollywood, California. I wasn’t sure if he had driven my Tahoe there, or flew, but my guess was that he had been able to get the safe opened, put the money in a bag, and headed west. I wasn’t aware of anyone he knew out there; I could only imagine what he could be doing. I decided to make a phone call.
Several rings in, Gerald’s former wife Kate picked up. “Hello?”
“Kate, its Donnie. How are you?”
“Oh, Donnie, it’s nice to hear your voice.” She sighed heavily. “Gerald told me you had been shot, and I came to see you in the hospital, but you were under sedation. I’m so sorry. Are you out now?”
“I am. I didn’t know you had visited. Thanks for coming by,” I said.
“Of course. I was very sorry to hear it.”
I changed gears. “Speaking of Gerald, have you seen him in a while?”
“Only once, a few days after you got attacked. He came by, said he got a temporary job and would be traveling for a while.”
“Did he leave anything with you?”
“What?” She sounded confused. “Like what?”
“Did he give you guys anything before he left?” I asked.
“No.” The confusion was clear now. “Was he supposed to?”
“No, not really. I just wondered if he did.” I had to think of something quick. “I had asked him to give Marie a teddy bear I had gotten for her a while back on a trip. He must have forgotten.”
“Oh. Yeah, he didn’t bring anything with him.”
“Okay, Kate. Thank you. I gotta run. I’ll talk soon. Tell Marie I said hello.”
“Okay Donnie, I will. Talk to you later. Glad you are healing up.”
“Thank you. Talk to you later.”
I hung up the phone, and any possible indecision I had was gone. I was more disgusted by whatever he was doing with the money than what he had done to me. I understood violence; that part made some sense to me. But I couldn’t see abandoning your daughter further when you had a chance to do something good for her. Marie and her mother Kate wouldn’t have needed to know the money was taken from me; he could have told them anything and they wouldn’t have been the wiser. Instead, he headed west, leaving them to struggle.
The future became sharper moment by moment.
***
My flight touched down at Los Angeles International Airport at five a.m. the following morning. Fortunately, I had been able to get some sleep on the late night flight. The only luggage I had was a small carry-on with two sets of clothes, so I was out of the airport quickly. I passed through the exit doors and the warm California air hit my skin, the lack of humidity refreshing. While it was cold still in North Carolina, it was always warm here; I silently marveled at that. The rush of cars and voices was like a blanket; I stood and took everything in for a moment. I went and found my rental car, a Ford Focus, and hopped on the interstate toward Hollywood.
The safe deposit box was at an investment company off of La Cienega Boulevard. I went to my hotel, the Comfort Inn on Sunset Boulevard, and checked in to kill time before I could get to the box. The investment company was very private, and didn’t have the safeguards most banks had. It was easier to get out of there with a bag of guns than your typical bank, for example. It had served me perfectly for a number of years while on business in Los Angeles. Nobody ever paid any attention, so I was able to be in and out effortlessly as I pleased.
At nine a.m., I went and retrieved my supplies from the safe deposit box. Inside were two firearms, another SIG Sauer P220 with a silencer, and a small .20 caliber handgun. I also took the Defender hunting knife, which was a mean looking seven-inch blade, a portable GPS system, a set of binoculars, and two-thousand dollars in cash. I laid everything in a briefcase and took it back to the Comfort Inn.
I spent the better part of the afternoon resting. I was still very sore, and at times, weak. Around four p.m., I went to the rental car, plugged in the address on the GPS, and did a test pass on the location where my brother was supposed to be located. I tried not to think of what the future held in that moment; I just wanted to make everything as smooth as possible, to see the ins and outs, to visualize the way I would handle the task at hand this evening. This was different than how I normally completed a contract. Normally I had more time. Now, with the cross-country flight, I was limited to a day. It would be hard to limit the scope of everything that had transpired in my life between my brother and I to a day, but the world was never intrinsically fair.
The address led to an apartment building on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a rectangular, three story pinkish stucco structure that was open in the center with a courtyard and pool. The building itself essentially served as a border for the interior which was populated by tan men and women sunbathing under the occasional palm tree outcropping. The name of the complex was the StarWalk Oasis, a nod to the Hollywood stars memorialized in the sidewalk pavement outside on the street. I pulled into a parking space that looked into the center courtyard entrance. The apartment Gerald was in was on the third floor, apartment 315. I pulled out the binoculars and scanned the third floor walkway; I could see the door to his apartment, but the blinds were closed. I sat and watched for about forty-five minutes, with no activity to report.
I left and went to get something to eat at an Italian restaurant called Vinnie’s down the street. After dinner, I went back to my hotel room and went over things i
n my mind. I had a simple plan, but there was no way to develop it more in depth due to the quick nature of this job. Some of it would develop on the fly, which I was okay with, all things considered. I was skilled at improvisation as I had been in situations where it had been necessary in the past.
Of course, those were contracts, not my brother.
I reminded myself that he was brother in flesh only. That was a hard thing to accept, but every time I flashed back to him standing over me and firing a bullet into my chest at near point-blank range made it somewhat easier to rationalize. I’ve never been an emotional person; this is part of what has made me a successful killer. I once took a razor blade and cut a man over one-thousand times. Eventually he bled to death, but before that happened, his screams were endless, pitiful, agonizing, and yet, if you had taken my blood pressure you would not have registered a spike.
I don’t feel much, which is probably part of why I’m still alone at this point in my life.
But my brother...
I felt something: anger, and to a lesser degree, sadness. I felt anger about his daughter; I felt anger about his willingness to kill me without a second thought when I was totally blind to what was happening. I felt sadness about the shared history of suffering we had shared, how we had been each other’s spines for so long, all the love that had been there that was now completely gone. We had started as two small boys in North Carolina, and here we were two and a half decades later in California, in what would certainly be a final act for one of us.
Chapter Twelve
I went over my weapons to make sure they were properly loaded and in working order. After feeling satisfied, I put them into a black handbag, along with the knife, and the money. I got dressed, went to my car and drove to a nearby hardware store. I bought a red plastic gas container, a roll of three-quarter inch nylon twine, a roll of duct tape, a box of latex gloves and a packet of lighters. I next went to a gas station where I filled up the gas container. I paid for everything in cash and then drove back to the StarWalk Oasis apartments.
***
I pulled into the parking lot and backed into a space near the exit. I put on a sport coat over the polo shirt I wore, and tucked the SIG Sauer with the silencer into one side of my waistband, and put the .20 caliber gun in the other, along with the knife. I put the remaining cash into my pants pocket, and put two pairs of gloves into my sport coat pocket. I exited the car and walked into the courtyard.
I took the stairs nearest the side of his apartment. It was shortly after nine p.m., and there were a number of people still hanging out around the pool, drinking beer and swimming. They paid me no mind as I moved past them; they were lost in their own activities, oblivious to the danger. It was dark on the third floor balcony and I slipped on a pair of latex gloves as I approached the door of Gerald’s apartment. The blinds were still closed, but there was light illuminating them and the television was on. I could hear muffled voices blending in with the TV; I leaned in close to the door and knocked with my right hand. The voices stopped; someone turned the television down. I pulled close to the door, just below the peephole. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone go to the window, peek through the blinds for a few seconds, then move away from them. I heard a male voice starting talking that I was sure wasn’t my brother, then a female, and finally Gerald’s voice. I knocked again and stood up straight, withdrawing the SIG Sauer. I heard footsteps come to the door, the handle turn, the lock engage and someone start to open the door-
I shoved it open, knocking a man backward onto the carpet. I quickly closed it behind me.
“No one move, no one make a fucking sound,” I hissed. “Not a sound.”
I quickly assessed the room; it was a living room, very dirty, with beer cans, pizza and take-out boxes strewn about. The couch was pulled out into a bed, and a young looking, small white girl sat on it, naked except for panties. She looked strung out on something, and had bruises and a black eye. She looked at me in a daze, but also scared. The guy on the floor was a black guy, short, covered in tattoos, and hatred burned in his eyes. He glanced over at my brother, then back at me, trying to put it all together. Finally, my brother sat in a chair against the wall, looking at me like he was seeing a ghost. In front of him was a coffee table with a gun on it, as well as a large glass bong and a crack pipe. A rolled up dollar bill and the remnants of several cocaine lines also sporadically powdered the glass table. My brother looked at the gun on the table, then at the one in my hand, clearly considering his options.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “You’ll be dead before you can get your hand to it.” I looked over at the girl; tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes. I figured she couldn’t be older than eighteen or nineteen. I looked at my brother.
“Who’s the girl?” I asked him.
“Just a whore,” he said.
“You do that to her?” I motioned toward her face, at the black eye and bruises.
He put on a wicked grin. “Nothing she isn’t used to.”
I looked at her again. “What’s your name?”
“Danielle,” she said, weakly.
“Danielle, in my pocket I have some money. Five hundred dollars of it is yours if you will go in the bathroom, lock the door, and don’t make any noise no matter what you hear. I’ll get you when you can come out. Is that a deal?”
She nodded, stood up, stumbled, and fumbled past my brother and the guy on the floor to the bathroom. She was mostly out of it; I hoped she would stay quiet.
Next, I addressed the guy on the floor. “Who are you?”
“None of your business, you cracker-ass motherfucker,” he said.
I turned to my brother. “Who is he?”
“His name is James. I buy stuff from him.”
I motioned at the coffee table. “This type of shit?”
“Yeah, among other shit,” he said.
“These are harder drugs than you’ve been into before, Bit.”
He said nothing.
“The girl?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah, he provides them also. Whatever type I want.”
The man named James spoke. “What the fuck, G? Why you tellin’ him all my shit?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I interjected. I walked over to the television and turned the volume up louder.
“What are you doing?” James asked.
“This.” I pulled out the .20 caliber handgun, leaned in and shot him through the forehead. The sound was not very loud with the TV turned up. The bullet didn’t exit his head, bouncing around his brain instead. It was the perfect close range assassin tool, and I had used it before. I put the smaller weapon back in my waistband.
“Damn, Donnie,” Gerald said, pushing back in his chair, looking down at the dead man on his floor. A single stream of blood ran down James’s face, tracing down the bridge of his nose through the corner of his right eye, pooling out and running down his cheek, soaking into the carpet around his head.
I turned the television back down to a lower volume. I listened for the girl; she wasn’t making any sound.
I turned to my brother. “You got lucky in that I already had the money in a safe.”
Gerald chuckled. “I would have gotten it anyway. Oscar had a very brutal way of getting what he needed. You would have given up the bank information, eventually,” he said.
Yet again I realized how much I had underestimated him.
“What’s out here that you wanted my money for?”
“Palm trees, bitches and drugs,” he replied sarcastically. “That’s what everyone wants, right?” He looked at the guy on the floor. “Man, I can’t believe you killed that dude.”
“I’m not interested in your bullshit, Gerald. What’s out here?”
He ran his hands through his hair. “Nothing, really. It was just a fresh start, and a fast-paced life.” He flashed his devilish grin again. “All jokes aside, with money, you can get whatever you want out here.” He grew quiet for a
second. “I’ve got a question for you: how the fuck are you still alive?”
“I’m alive because of surgeons who are very good at their job, and because you weren’t very good at yours,” I said.
Gerald bristled. “You’re lucky, that’s all that is. Pure luck.”
“Even if that’s true,” I said, “that doesn’t help you now.”
He looked at the gun on the coffee table again, then me. “You going to kill me, then?”
I ignored his question. “Is there a back way out of these apartments?”
“Yeah. The stairs on the other side.”
“You have a vehicle down there?”
“Yeah, your Tahoe.” He shrugged. “I stole a different set of tags off another vehicle in Tennessee, slapped it on there.”
“That sounds more like your usual abilities as a criminal,” I replied.
“Fuck you,” he snapped.
I ignored him, instead walking over to a dresser. I opened the drawers, flipping through them, until I found a tee shirt and a set of athletic shorts. I pulled them out, then fished out a set of socks. Gerald sat watching me.
“Don’t move,” I said, “or I will shoot you.” I put the clothes under my arm and walked slowly toward the bathroom, keeping my eyes on Gerald. I knocked on the bathroom door.
The girl named Danielle cracked the door open, eyeing me cautiously. “Here, put these on.” She took the clothes from my hand and closed the door. “Come out when you are dressed,” I said.
I walked back to the living room and trained the SIG Sauer on Gerald. “When you were doing things to that girl, did you not see your daughter in ten years?” I asked him.