The Collection

by Bentley Little

  "Hector was a friend."

  "I said I'm sorry."

  I was still furious, but I knew enough not to push it. I might be brave when I'm angry, but I'm not stupid. I took a deep breath. "Hector gave me the name of a woman who might offer me an in to the Guatemalan community. I'll ask around. See what I can find out about this Maya and her mother."

  There was silence on the line, but I knew he was nodding. "Keep me informed," he said.

  "Of course."

  I was still furious, but I pretended I wasn't, and we ended on a false note of rapprochement. I wondered after I hung up what kind of man could treat human life so casually, could order deaths as other people ordered dinner, and I told my­self that the kind of man who could do that was the kind of man who would statutorily rape the daughter of his house­keeper.

  The kind of man I would take on as a client.

  I didn't want to think about that, and I walked into the kitchen to make my morning wake-up coffee.

  Maria Torres's bodega was closed when I arrived, so I went to a nearby McDonald's to get some coffee. There were gang members signing near the blocked bathrooms and a host of hostile faces among the silently staring people at the tables, so I paid for my order, took the covered cup, and went out to wait in my car.

  I didn't have to wait long. Before the coffee was even cool enough to drink, a dark, overweight woman in a white ruffled skirt walked down the street and stopped in front of the barred door of the bodega. She sorted through a massive keyring, used one of the keys to open the door, and flipped the Closed sign in the window to Open.

  I went over to talk to her.

  The woman was indeed Maria Torres, and when I told her that Hector had said she could put me in touch with a Guatemalan woman who might know Maya's mother, she nodded and started telling me in broken English a long involved story about her son and how he'd met and married this Guatemalan girl over the wishes of her and her family. It was clear that she hadn't heard what had happened to Hec­tor, and I didn't want to be the one to tell her, so I simply waited, listened, nodded, and when she finally got around to telling me her daughter-in-law's name and address, I wrote it down.

  "Does she speak English?" I asked.

  "Therese?" Maria smiled widely. "More better than me."

  I thanked her, and to show my appreciation, I bought a trinket from her store, a little rainbow-colored "friendship bracelet" that I could either give to my niece or toss away, depending on how the mood struck me.

  The Guatemalans lived in a ghetto of a ghetto in the slums of south Phoenix. It was a bad area on a good day, and there hadn't been a lot of good days since the beginning of this long, hot summer.

  I found the house with no problem—a crummy plywood shack on a barren lot with no vegetation—and I got out of my car and walked up to the section of plywood that I as­sumed to be the door.

  I should've brought a tape recorder, I thought as I knocked. But it didn't really matter, because no one was home. I walked over to the neighbors on both sides, but one of the houses was empty and the tired skinny old man in the other spoke no English. My attempts at pidgin Spanish elicited from him only a blank look.

  I decided to head home, get my tape recorder, then come back and see if Therese had returned, but when I reached the front door of my apartment, the phone was ringing, and it continued to ring as I unlocked and opened the door. Some­one was sure anxious to talk to me, and I hurried over, picked up the receiver.

  It was the Big Man.

  I recognized the voice but not the tone. Gone was the ar­rogant attitude, the sureness and confidence born of long-held power.

  The Big Man sounded scared.

  "She's hit me!" he said.

  "Maya's mother?"

  He was frantic. "Get over here now!"

  "What happened?"

  "Now!"

  I drove like a bat out of hell. I did not slow down even through Paradise Valley with its hidden radar cameras, and I sped up Scottsdale Road at nearly twice the speed limit, fig­uring I'd have the Big Man pay off any tickets that were sent to me through the mail.

  One of Pressman's flunkies was waiting for me at the door of the house, and I was quickly ushered in and taken to the bedroom, where the Big Man was seated on a chair next to the gigantic waterbed, stripped to the waist. He looked at me with frightened eyes as I entered.

  I felt a sudden coldness in my gut.

  His right arm had withered to half its normal size and was blackening with rot. No less than three doctors, all of them obviously very highly paid specialists, were standing around him, one of them injecting something into the arm, the other two talking low amongst themselves.

  "That bitch cursed me!" he shouted, and there was both anger and fear in his voice. "I want her found! Do you un­derstand me?"

  The flunkies and I all nodded. None of us were sure who he was talking to, and it was safer at this point not to ask.

  The Big Man grimaced as the needle was pulled out of his arm. He looked at me, motioned me over, and one of the doctors stepped aside so I could get close.

  "Is there any way to reverse this?" he asked through grit­ted teeth. "Can I get this curse taken off me somehow?"

  "I don't know," I admitted.

  "Well, find out!"

  He screamed, and the arm shrunk another six inches be­fore our eyes. The doctors looked at each other, obviously at a loss. They seemed nervous, and it occurred to me for the first time that though they might be tops in their field, the best and the brightest the Mayo Clinic had to offer, they were just as afraid of the Big Man's wrath as anyone else. It was a sobering thought.

  I started out of the bedroom, intending to find a phone, make a few calls, and see if anyone of my acquaintance knew anything about the lifting of Guatemalan arm-shrinking spells. I turned around in the doorway, wanting to ask the Big Man something else, but he screamed again and, with a sickeningly wet pop his arm disappeared, its tail-end nub sucked into his shoulder, the skin closing behind it as if it had never existed.

  I hurried out of the room.

  No one I knew had any info or any ideas, so I figured the best idea was to once again stake out Therese's shack. I told one of the Big Man's flunkies to let him know that I'd gone to find out about the spell and Maya's mother. The flunky looked about as thrilled as I felt to be telling the Big Man anything right now, and I quickly left before he could de­cline and insist that I do it myself.

  Luckily for me, Therese was home. Alone. I put on my most official-looking expression in order to intimidate her into talking. I told her I was working for Vincent Pressman, hoping that the name carried weight even down here, and said that he wanted to know the current whereabouts of his former maid and her daughter Maya.

  Word about the situation must have already spread through the Guatemalan community because Therese blanched at Pressman's name, and quickly crossed herself when I mentioned Maya.

  "You know something about this," I said.

  She nodded, obviously frightened. I got the feeling she wasn't supposed to be talking to outsiders.

  "What's going on?" I asked. "What's happening to Mr. Pressman?"

  The woman looked furtively about. "He mess with the wrong woman. She a ... how you call it? ... Very power­ful, uh ..."

  "Witch?" I offered helpfully

  "Yes! Witch! She curse him. She will kill him but she want him to suffer first." Therese crossed herself again.

  "What about her daughter, Maya?"

  "Daughter dead."

  "What?"

  "Mother kill her. She have to. Cannot live with shame. Now she blame him for daughter's death, too. His fault she have to kill girl." She shook her head. "It bad. Very bad."

  I asked about removing the curse, asked if there was any­one else who could do it, another witch perhaps, but Therese said that only the one who applied the curse could lift it. She told me the other limited options for dealing with the situa­tion, but they were all horrible, and I asked if I could talk
to someone who knew more about the black arts than she did, but she would not give me any names, not even for a pair of Andrew Jacksons.

  I wanted to stop by my place, pick up a few phone num­bers, some people I knew who weren't Guatemalan but might be able to tell me something about lifting curses, but Armstrong was waiting for me outside my apartment, and with typically piggish glee he told me that since I was one of the last people to see Hector alive, I was automatically a suspect in his murder. I denied everything as I desperately tried to think of who could have seen me with him, who could have ratted me out, but Armstrong motioned for me to get in the cruiser so we could go down to the station and talk.

  All the way over, my stomach was tied up in knots. Not because of Hector—I was innocent, and I knew there was no way that even Armstrong could make that stick—but be­cause I needed to talk to the Big Man. He was waiting with his one arm to hear what I'd found, but I sure as hell couldn't call from a police station, and I sat in the interro­gation room as I waited for someone to talk to me, and pre­tended I was in no hurry to do anything.

  An hour or so later, a smirking Armstrong joined me. He asked me a shitload of stupid questions, then leaned smugly back in his chair. "In my estimation, you're a flight risk," he said. "I can keep you in custody for twenty-four without cause, and I think I'm going to do that while we sort through what you said and check out your alibis."

  He grinned at me. He knew I was innocent, but this was his idea of fun, and I made no comment and pretended as though I didn't care one way or the other as I was led to a holding cell.

  I was awakened in the middle of the night by a cowed young sergeant who was accompanied by an intimidating man in a smartly fitted business suit, and I knew that the Big Man had tracked me down and had me sprung.

  I was happy to be out, but I didn't like being this close to someone that powerful, and I vowed to be careful who I took on as clients in the future—no matter how interesting their cases might be.

  A limo was waiting outside, and we drove in silence out to the desert.

  It was late at night, but the Big Man was awake. He was also limping. It looked like he was wearing a diaper, but I saw the grimace of pain on his face as he sat down, and I knew something else had happened, something far worse than mere incontinence.

  I was afraid to ask, but I had to know. "What happened?"

  "My cock," he said, his voice barely above a mumble. "It attacked me."

  "What?"

  "I woke up, and it'd turned into a snake. It was biting my leg and whipping around and biting my stomach, and I could feel its poison spreading through me. So I ran into the kitchen and got a knife and I cut it off."

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Pressman had cut off his own penis? I imagined Maya's mother cackling to her­self as she wove that spell.

  "The doctors sewed me up, but they couldn't sew it back on. It was still alive. We had to kill it." He grimaced, using his arm to grab the side of the sofa and support himself. "So what'd you find out?"

  I told him the truth. "Maya's dead. Her mother killed her. Now she blames you for that, too." I motioned toward his crotch. "So this is going to go on. You're going to be tor­tured until you die. And then she'll own you after death. She'll be able to do whatever she wants with your soul."

  "I'll kill her," he said. "I'll find that bitch and kill her."

  "Won't do any good. The whammy's on, and as I under­stand it, killing her won't stop it. All of the Guatemalans are terrified. She's one powerful woman."

  "So what are my options?"

  I shrugged. "Only three that I see. One: get her to stop, convince her to lift the curse, which, considering the situa­tion, I don't think is going to happen. Two: put up with this shit until you die and then go gently into her vindictive lit­tle hands ..." I trailed off.

  "And three?"

  I looked at him. "You can take your own life. That will put an end to it. Her curse is meant to kill you ... eventu­ally. But if you take matters into your own hands, if you in­terrupt it and thwart her plans, all rights revert back to you."

  I was playing it cool, playing it tough, but the truth was, I was scared shitless. Not of the Big Man, not anymore, but of what I'd gotten into here, of the powers we were dealing with. I was out of my depth, but Pressman was still putting it all on my shoulders. I was supposed to be the expert, and it was a role I neither deserved nor wanted.

  He was actually considering the benefits of suicide.

  "So if I eat my gun—"

  "No," I said. "It has to be stabbing or hanging."

  He slammed his hand down on the back of the couch. "Why?" He glared at me. "What fucking difference does that make?"

  "I don't know why," I said. "But it does make a differ­ence. I don't make the rules, I just explain them. And for some reason, those are the only two ways that are guaran­teed to get you out from under the curse. A shooting might work, but then again, it might not. And you'll only get one chance at this, so you'd better make sure it counts."

  He shook his head, lurched away from the sofa. "Fuck that. There's no way in hell I'm going to off myself because some little wetback bitch put her voodoo on me. I'll take my chances. I'm going to find her and get rid of her and we'll see if that works."

  That's what he said on Thursday.

  On Friday, his teeth fell out.

  On Saturday, he began shitting rocks.

  His men did find the maid, and the cops found her later, her teeth knocked out, her arm amputated, her private parts cut open, her anus stuffed with gravel. Like Hector, she was in a Dumpster, having been left there to die, and over the next few days several other Guatemalans, who I suppose had some relationship to Maya's mother, were also found murdered.

  But it didn't stop for the Big Man. His travails grew worse, and by midweek, he was able to walk only with the help of serious painkillers.

  I asked around, checked my other sources, even went out to see Bookbinder, but the first facts proved true, and no one knew of a way to get around the witch's handiwork.

  I stayed away, stayed home, tried to stay out of it, tried not to think about it, but finally he called me in, and I went. There was almost no trace left of that hard, confident crime lord I'd met the first day. He was broken and blubbering, drunk and wasted, and he told me that he wanted to hang himself.

  Only he was too weak to do it on his own.

  I told him he could have some of his men help him, but he said he didn't want them to do it and they probably wouldn't anyway. He also wanted to make sure he did everything right, that nothing went wrong.

  "You're the only one who knows that shit," he said, his voice slurred.

  I nodded reluctantly.

  He grabbed my shoulder. I think he wanted to make sure he had my full attention, but it seemed more as though he used me to steady himself. "I don't want to suffer after death," he whispered. His eyes were feverish, intense. "And I don't want that wetback bitch to win." His voice rose. "Your daughter was the best fuck I ever had!" he shouted to the air. "I took that whore the way she liked it! I gave her what she wanted! I gave her what she wanted!"

  I left him in the bedroom, went out to the garage and found a rope, and set it up, throwing it over the beam, tying the knots.

  He changed his mind at the last minute. A lot of people do. It's a hard way to go, a painful, ugly way, and the sec­ond he jumped off the chair, he started to claw at the rope and flail away in the air.

  I thought about helping him. Part of me wanted to help him.

  But I didn't.

  I let him thrash about, watching him die, until he was still. I'll probably go to hell for that, but I can't seem to muster up much remorse for it. I wish I could say that I let him die for his own sake, so Maya's mother wouldn't own his soul, but the truth was that I did it because I wanted him dead. I thought we'd all be better off without him.

  "That's for Hector," I said softly.

  I stood there for a moment more, watching him swing, and
I actually did feel bad. No one deserved what had hap­pened to the Big Man, and I was glad he'd escaped, glad he wouldn't have to suffer it anymore.

  But I was also glad he was gone.

  I walked out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the front of the house, where I found one of his men eating crackers in the kitchen.

  "Call the cops," I said. "He's dead."

  The flunky looked at me dumbly. He knew what had gone down, but it still seemed to catch him off guard. "What'll I tell them?"

  I patted his cheek on my way out. "Don't worry. You'll think of something."

  I walked outside and got in my car, driving as quickly as I could away from the house. The air in the vehicle was sti­fling, but I didn't mind, and I felt as though I'd just been re­leased from a prison as I followed the dirt road through the desert, past the crosses and the doll parts and the skull-headed scarecrows, toward the distant white smog of Phoenix, shimmering in the heat.

  Colony

  When H. R. Haldeman died, I found myself thinking about the labyrinthine nightmare that was Watergate. Which led me to think about conspiracy theories. What if Haldeman wasn't really dead? I thought. What if he was only pretending to be dead but had really gone underground?

  Why, though? What would be the reason?

  Years later, when Hong Kong reverted back to China, I was reminded of Britain's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands (or Islas Malvinas). I had not known until the war that Britain had any remaining colonies. I'd been under the impression that the em­pire was history. Obviously I was wrong, and I won­dered if there were other far-flung properties under British rule that I did not know about.

  Somewhere down the line, those two unrelated bits of random speculation coalesced into this story.

  ***

  It was awkward.

  He had campaigned on a cost-cutting platform, pledging to reduce spending and staff, and now with the White House employees all assembled before him, he wanted to remain impassive, impartial, detached.

  But he could not. These were real people before him. Real people with real jobs and real bills to pay. On the cam­paign trail, they'd been merely a faceless statistic, a theoret­ical conceit. But now as Adam stared out at the faces of these workers, many of whom had been employed here for longer than he'd been alive, he felt embarrassed and ashamed. He realized, perhaps for the first time, that his de­cisions for the next four years would have human conse­quences, would take their toll on individual lives—not an earth-shattering conclusion by any means, but one which he now understood emotionally as well as intellectually.