Disintegration: A Windy City Dark Mystery

by Richard Thomas

  The man holds up a large stack of cards in front of him. A silent film, I guess.

  Build a fire, destroy this film.

  The card flips down and the head bows, drifts to the right, and then back up.

  No sympathy for the employee.

  The card drops down.

  Sloppy work. Insubordination.

  The head turns to the right, nods and continues.

  Too close to home, my home.

  The hands, I notice the hands, they’re small.

  He won’t see it coming.

  The gloves peel off, and underneath, long slender fingers and pale skin.

  Holly can wait. But not long. She won’t run.

  They’re a woman’s hands, black nail polish.

  Don’t fuck it up.

  The cards are done, and in one quick movement the hood is pulled off. Isadora stares back at me, her lips trembling, a muted whimper, eyes wet and overflowing with tears running down her face. She mouths one word.

  “Run.”

  Isadora. My Isadora, the pale goddess.

  The gun is at her temple before I can do anything, a sharp, hollow retort, like a firecracker, hardly real at all. Blood spurts out the other side of her head, bone and flesh fanning out in a spray, her eyes wide open, her head barely moving. She tips over slowly and falls out of the picture, onto the floor with barely a sound. A sack of potatoes dropped on the ground, a bag of sand. Inhuman.

  I’m standing up, gripping the set and staring at the screen—waiting for the joke, the punch line. Maybe it’s not real, a stage gag, something to frighten me. A hand reaches in and holds up the last card and shakes it at the camera.

  Don’t fuck it up.

  I’m about to fling the set through the wall when the picture goes to static, and then returns. A notepad is held in front of the screen, hastily scratched in permanent marker.

  Holly. Don’t hesitate.

  The video starts up again, and I sit back down, still in shock, my chest a snare drum on an extended roll. The tape moves on. It’s worse than Holly’s file. Next to the set is a half-empty bottle of bourbon that I notice for the first time. The cat is nowhere to be seen. She knows to stay gone.

  How and why they made this tape, I don’t know. It shows Holly in a cell, a high angle coming down from the ceiling. It’s grainy and black and white, and it shows a very similar video, again and again.

  She’s talking to a young man, there’s no sound, and she sits across from him, getting more and more agitated. The man is in handcuffs and shakes his head, she yells, her face contorted, stands up, and he shakes his head some more. He opens his mouth. She slaps him in the face. She yells some more, face red, neck strained, leaning forward. I hardly recognize her. She stands up and walks over, punches him in the face. She punches him again. She wraps her tiny hands around his neck, the muscles on her arms straining, her back shaking, and she tightens her grip, squeezing for an eternity. She finally releases him, and he slumps in the chair as she walks out of the shot. This happens several times, the same scene replayed, with different guys, but the same result.

  I unscrew the top of the bourbon, and swallow three times.

  The next shot is of a playground, the video through a wire mesh fence, in vibrant colors. It could be at a school or a park—it’s hard to tell. Kids are swinging, running around, chasing each other, playing in the sand. Two mothers stand talking, their backs to the camera. They’re engaged in a heated conversation, muffled squeals in the distance, the words garbled. A third woman sits off to the side, a baby stroller next to her. She pushes it back and forth cooing at the baby, leaning over it. A small girl comes over to look at the baby and the woman on the bench leans over again. It’s Holly. She’s wearing a scarf on her head and large sunglasses, but it’s her. The blond wig under the wrap is cut short, but it works. When the little girl leans over to look at the baby, Holly pulls a rag out from inside the stroller and pushes it over the girl’s mouth. The girl struggles for only a second and passes out, going limp. Holly turns the girl around and shoves her into the empty stroller, covering her with a blanket. The tiny legs, Barbie Band-Aid on one knee, extend just beyond the pink blanket. Holly covers the girl’s slack face and stands up. She slowly walks past the camera and out of the shot, the lens focused on the swings, the slides, and the two mothers with their backs to the camera, turned to each other, away from the bench. Their arms are animated, and it continues for a minute. A minute longer than either mother will ever think was important, the worst minute of their lives. I can hear them already.

  “I only took my eyes off her for a second.”

  “She was on the swing. The slide. I know she was close by.”

  It’s a parent’s worst nightmare come true, the horror from the evening news in their own backyard, urban legend come home to rest.

  “I was right there.”

  They may remember a woman with a stroller and blond hair, or they may not.

  I don’t need to see any more. I turn the set off and sit in the dark. I have work to do, a man to visit, an employee to terminate, a monster to erase, a horrible woman that held me while I wept, told me it would be okay, and pressed up against me in the dark.

  Am I worse?

  Am I any better?

  Does it matter?

  Chapter 74

  I stand in the postage-stamp-sized backyard over a small fire pit, the quiet of the dark sky around me. I’ve taken an old chair that was standing back here and broken it into pieces, the anger easily at my fingertips, breaking off the chair legs, a muddy slush beneath my feet as I turn in circles in the snow. I crumple newspaper that I pulled from the garbage cans, tear to pieces cardboard cereal boxes, Lucky Charms and Count Chocula, a twinge in my gut, and the fire is ready to go. I bend over and hold out the lighter, the one from Damon’s apartment. I light the paper, and it smokes, and slowly starts to burn.

  I stare at the red flickering light, waiting for it to catch, the videotape clattering in my coat pocket. What good has my work done if Holly is out there abducting children, and other dark deeds? It seems pointless now. For some reason I believed that Vlad was doing something good, ridding the world of these predators and abusers. And maybe he was. Maybe that work that Holly did was before his time, before she worked for him. And now she has to go. I don’t know. I’m not buying it. I think I need to talk to Vlad. He said he had some news for me, and I remember the man, the employee I’m now destined to let go, his talk of fires, faked deaths, ghost families living separate lives. Is any of it true? Is he as delusional as I am, was he simply wishing for this to be a reality and not some hallucination, exhausted and strung out on whatever those pills are, unstable to say the least?

  I think I have to ask him a few more questions. I know where the morgue is, it isn’t that far. I’ll put that on my to-do list, stop by and talk to the staff, see if they remember me, I have to risk it. I’ll be out that way soon enough, when I go to see Holly. I can’t give myself that hope yet, that they may still be alive. It complicates things beyond reason, beyond what I can handle.

  The fire is a steady blaze now, so I toss the tape in. It lands in the center, the plastic melting quickly. I reach into my other pocket and pull out the envelope. I know his face, and I know where he lives. I can’t keep looking at him, that stupid ring in his nose. It’s me in three months, farther down the road, more of a shell, about at the end of it all, and I don’t need to see that. I toss it in and stare at the flames. I sip the bourbon and try to remember the face of my wife.

  Chapter 75

  I sleep the day away, sweating under the blankets, an uneasy rest. I’m haunted by the sound of cars racing over wet pavement, the squeal of tires. Traffic lights blink off and on, and I see nothing but accidents, an Accord plowing into an SUV, running through a stop sign, filling the driver’s seat with bumper and glass. A red Buick stops, taillights shining, and the windshield is filled with the trunk of the car, steering wheel speeding forward, the impact and sensation of
pain, body parts bending wrong, the snap of a bone, the gush of hot blood. A semi-truck in the rear mirror, and it isn’t slowing down, foot on the brake as it plows into the back of the blue-green Eclipse, pushing it forward into the semi in front of it, the hood sliding under, the wide rusted bumper screeching over the metal, pulling the emergency brake, to no effect. The panic, the sense of being trapped, the certainty of death and my eyes open—I don’t need this.

  The dream slips away and I hear screams from outside my apartment. A woman’s voice outside, the crying of a small child, a girl, begging for something, scolding her mother, promises were broken, time has slipped away, there are things to do, she says, the wish will not be granted, and it seems so petty to me. Give her the damn candy bar. Buy the stickers. Get a fucking puppy. It’s nothing to scar your daughter over, the yelling and cursing, a smack on the back of the legs. Pulling at her arm to get her home, dinner must be served, your father will be home soon, shopping bags dangling from an arm, two new blouses, flip-flops, and perfume.

  At least she’s alive.

  My stomach turns over. I can’t remember the last time I ate. I’m sick to my stomach and ravenous at the same time. I shower to remain human, scrubbing my body with a tiny bar of soap, too lazy to go out and buy more, uneasy in any public environment. I get dressed. I open the back door and holler for the cat, but there’s no sign of her. It worries me. I leave the window to the kitchen open, screw the cold, I’m mostly numb anyway, and fill the cat bowl with dry food, change the water, and stare out into the alley as the sun begins to set. Over the brick walls and telephone lines, a flutter of black birds drifts in formation, jumping to the right, then back, swirling, and then gone. A plane in the distance, Midway or O’Hare, and I wish I was on it, anywhere but here.

  When it’s almost dark, I leave. There’s a diner just south of here, the Busy Bee.

  The sidewalks are icy, some are cleared and some are not, the snow in drifts, cars covered entirely. An odd arrangement of chairs and brooms hold the empty slots hostage. It’s a Chicago thing. If you take the time, make the effort to shovel your car out, backbreaking work, you can claim it with just about anything—a cardboard box, Weber grill, traffic cones, or the classic: two plastic lawn chairs and a broom combo. You don’t violate this trust, ever. Move those boxes and park your car and you can expect to have your windows shattered. Run over that singular plastic, red bucket with a tiny yellow shovel sticking out of it, and expect to find ASSHOLE carved into the driver’s side door. And I couldn’t agree more. Shovel your own damn spot.

  There isn’t much foot traffic. There are a few men in overcoats and dress shoes, briefcases in hand. Women in long coats, stylish fur collars and crystal buttons, long boots over their stockings, eyes down, trying not to fall. A specter that is the translucent echo of my wife holds the hands of two dirty children, stained T-shirts and tennis shoes bound with duct tape, dragging them away from me, and they are around the corner, gone, and I curse them. South on Milwaukee, not a storefront around, brick buildings and wrought iron gates, the highway in the distance, a blink of red lights, the heavy whoosh of semis going under the bridge, horns honking, and there are so many of them. The commute. Commuters. So many lives going on just out of my line of sight, just out of reach.

  I hated it, the traffic, the painfully slow crawl, the bad talk radio, punching a clock, filling out reports, deadlines and assholes, everyone scuttling for attention, everyone jockeying for a promotion. It seemed so important, so dramatic. I laugh at it now. Could I ever return to such a life? Told to stay late, yelled at for a spelling error, a digit in the wrong column. How could I be human now? This mask that I’m wearing, I could slip it on from time to time, I’m sure of it, but I could never leave it behind. There would be slashed tires in the parking lot, sand in the gas tank. Maybe a robbery by a masked assailant, roughed up late at night, heading home after a hard day of belittling the employees and making snarky comments. How long until a picture of the CEO’s daughter appears on his desk, the address of the school she attends, the time she gets out, the bus she rides on clearly spelled out? And in my eye there would be a gleam, a snicker behind the cubicle walls. They’d show up with questions, and I’d make a mistake, I’m only human. Pictures on my hard drive that I thought I had erased. No alibi for the beating in the parking lot, no alibi for any of it.

  No. I can’t go back.

  I pull open the door and walk in. The smell of frying potatoes, oil and garlic, the rich aroma of coffee and I tremble. Why do I think I’m strong when I’m fragile and weak?

  I shaved today, knowing I’d be out in the public eye, so I’m not quite as disheveled as usual. I’m not on fire, I don’t have three heads, and there isn’t a tattoo of 666 on my forehead. I should be fine.

  I sit at the counter, a long lozenge shape that fills the center of the restaurant. They serve breakfast all the time, and it sounds like heaven on a plate.

  “Coffee, hon?” she asks.

  Her name tag says Sophie. She’s portly, hair graying, massive chest hanging low, straining behind the apron, splattered with grease, a pencil behind her ear, and cat-eye glasses. There are small amber jewels in a string around her neck.

  “Please.”

  She flips over the cup and pours a steaming black liquid into it, spilling not a single drop. The pale yellow walls are too bright for me, so I stare into the swirling abyss in the dull, ceramic cup. The crowd is mostly elderly Polish men, short and fat, and skinny women in turquoise pants. A sprinkling of hipsters, pierced tongues lolling through scrambled eggs, blood sausage, and crispy potato pancakes. There are plates full of pierogi, bowls of split-pea soup with garlic croutons and sizable chunks of ham, beef goulash over a den of noodles. It’s a mix of white hair and baseball caps, goatees and bedazzled blouses. I fit right in.

  “Whattaya havin’?”

  She’s back, pad in her hand, pencil poised. I glance down at the plastic menu in my hand.

  “Breakfast number four,” I say, “over-easy, whole wheat toast.”

  “You got it.”

  I turn to the wall and notice the framed photos—President Clinton, Mayor Richard M. Daley, documents and awards and photos of softball teams. There’s a picture of the police chief, his arm around Sophie, and an award for community service. A long line of old radios, covered in dust, fill up a shelf all the way down the left side of the restaurant, like hunched-over gargoyles, watching the ravenous feed.

  The food arrives fast and hot and I bow my head and dig in. It’s fantastic. It may kill me later, I may not be able to keep it down, screwing up my usual diet of beer and bourbon, but it tastes so good right now. The bell behind me continues to ring and more and more people enter the diner. I don’t look up. The bacon is perfectly crisp and I’m getting a bit giddy. I smear strawberry preserves over the toast, mingling them with the butter. The yellow yolk runs over the potatoes, the starch crisp at the edges, moist inside, and I’m a machine, stuffing it down my yap, guzzling the coffee, under the watchful eye of Sophie.

  “Good?” she asks, beaming in front of me.

  I nod, my mouth full of sausage. I pour warm syrup over the pancakes and moan gently to myself.

  I look up and almost choke. I’ve been so involved in my feeding frenzy that I haven’t been paying attention. Farther down the bar are two fat white cops in full dress, drinking coffee and chatting with a young, thin waitress. Sophie wanders over and pats one of them on the hand. On the left, even farther down, are two thin black cops, one male and one female. The bell rings behind me and I freeze. Please, no.

  The white cops, ones I haven’t seen before, look up. They motion toward me, wave me over. My stomach lurches. I feel the cold at my back and two large bodies drift past me. These two, them I know. It’s the guys from the other night, by the alley. One of them chased me. He knows my face.

  Jesus Christ.

  I swallow and stare at my plate. I study the Rorschach on the faded china—it’s a bent arm, a torn skirt, a
splatter of gunshot, and I can’t swallow. I have to get out of here, quiet and fast.

  I slip a twenty out of my pocket and place it on the counter. Slowly I stand up and grab my coat off the stand by the door. I don’t even put it on. I open the door and the damn bells, I can feel Sophie turn toward me, I don’t even have to look. Her brow furrows as she walks toward me, she thinks I’m pulling a fast one, a dine-and-dash.

  “Hey, buddy…” she starts.

  The door is wide open, and sweat is oozing out of every pore. I can feel the eyes of the cops on me, all of them, the whole room, burrowing into my back. I don’t turn.

  She sees the twenty and stops.

  “…thanks, pal, have a good one.”

  She must be waving. My right hand flutters in the air like a wounded bird, wing broken, and I keep going, holding down the food, trying not to vomit. I make a left and head up the street, north on Milwaukee, and I dare to glance back through the windowpane, and there are no eyes on me.

  Chapter 76

  My extended family seems to live in the same neighborhood, this must be Vlad’s doing. My brother-in-arms is a short walk away. It’s dark out, but not too late, I don’t need more attention from the men in blue so I try to take this assignment to the streets during the normal drinking hours of Wicker Park.

  And for a few minutes, I’m lost in thought, the snow fluttering over my line of sight, and I could be on my way to meet a friend for drinks—a cheap pint at Estelle’s, a band at Double Door, pool at Holiday. But I’m not.

  I get off of Milwaukee and cut across Wicker Park. I flash on a puppy being kicked in the face, a jackass in a suit preying on the weak. I pass the very bench he was sitting on, and there is no remnant of our time spent here, no bloodstain to mark the history or scattered pieces of the plastic phone, no beaten-down scrap of ice cream cone. I didn’t expect anything to be here—a plaque maybe on the back of the bench, for volunteer work, helping the needy, maybe a simple thank-you from the ASPCA. No, nothing. No initials carved into the flaking green wood of the bench, nothing to mark my first kill. The day I became a man.