Mondo Crimson

by Andrew Post

  The handcuff clinked against the edge of the table when the man lifted his hand, padding his cotton-wrapped fingers around the lacquered tabletop. The smell of disinfectant and something like burned meat wafted from him whenever he moved. Mel felt nauseated, but knew throwing up would do no good. She had nothing in her stomach. Time had lost meaning, but it felt like a week or more since they’d given her anything to eat. “We’ve kicked solids,” Felix had told her, and laughed.

  The man’s hand finally bumped into the revolver. He traced its shape with his fingers then picked it up. Felix helped him insert his finger, swollen by bandages, inside the trigger guard. The man put the barrel to the side of his curiously small head and pulled the trigger. Only a click.

  The mosquitoes and leeches tightly congregated along the wall shuddered as one, either relieved for the man or rapturing in the new dose of tension.

  “My turn,” Felix said, his voice now nearly incomprehensible it was so rough. His lips seemed to have shriveled and fallen away. Only clacking, long teeth now. Eyes that never seemed to blink, inflamed, bloodshot, rimmed with red as if he had done so much mondo it had started to leak back out of him.

  He thumbed open the revolver. Spun the cylinder. Buzz of an insect. Snapped it shut. The buzzing stopped. He stared into Mel’s soul and put the gun to the side of his own head and pulled the trigger and did not so much as blink when it went click.

  A few more mosquitoes and a couple of bats had joined the mass darkening the far wall when Mel hadn’t been paying attention. Watching. Hungry. Always slightly in motion, slithering in place.

  Felix opened the revolver. Spun the cylinder. Buzz of an insect. Snapped it shut. The buzzing stopped. Slammed it on the table between Mel and the man and with a flick of his wrist, cast it spinning.

  Mel counted its rotations. Five. Then it came to rest. Pointing at her.

  Chapter Two

  Now

  Rather than responding with another text, Brenda hit call and brought the phone to her ear. It started to ring. She looked at Mel and put a finger to her lips. Mel nodded, worry still marking her features. On the third ring, someone picked up but didn’t say anything. Just breathed.

  “Who is this?” Brenda said.

  A female voice, squeaky, but it didn’t seem to be an affectation; she sounded like a genuine pre-teen. “Listen up. I’m only answering to tell you that this isn’t how this works. If you’re ready to do the drop, all you have to do is text back yes. If yes is too hard for you to spell, replying with just the letter Y will also work. Y is the one that looks like a T that somebody karate chopped in the middle. And if you don’t know what a T looks like, then I don’t think I can help you. What is with you old people always needing to talk on the phone, anyway?”

  Receiving such a generous sample of the girl’s voice, Brenda knew who it belonged to almost immediately. Brenda covered the phone with her hand and told Mel, “Get us moving.”

  “Where?”

  “The interstate. Westbound.”

  Brenda uncovered the phone. “I guess I just like knowing who I’m doing business with.”

  “And you think hearing my voice helps with that?”

  “You can tell a lot about a person by how they talk.”

  Mel took them out of the Mega Deluxo parking lot.

  A sigh in Brenda’s ear. “Cool. Very scary. We doing this thing or what?”

  “You tell me. Is it still on?”

  Mel got them on 694, westbound.

  “Sure,” the voice on the other end said. “Hang up and I’ll text you the address.” She either popped her knuckles right next to the mouthpiece or cracked her gum. “You know, the location my super-scary associates or whatever will be waiting for you so you can give them whatever is it you were told to bring them.”

  Brenda didn’t hang up. “This is Amber, isn’t it?”

  She tried lowering her voice. “No, I am afraid you must be mistaken, ma’am. Amber isn’t here. My name is…Stella. Stella Artois. Today’s my first day.”

  “Good one. Classic Amber. I think I’d recognize that voice anywhere,” Brenda said, and when Everett Street came up she motioned for Mel to make a left. “You’re one of Felix’s payroll people, the one that always sounds like she just did a big hit of helium. Felix had you call me one time, when I was having trouble with my account. This was a while ago now, but that voice of yours, yikes, it’s a unique one. Tough to forget.”

  Another sigh. “Fuck do you want, Brenda? A gold star for pulling a successful Scooby-Doo, figuring out something stupid-obvious?”

  “I imagine you’re surprised to be hearing from me.”

  “Not particularly. Should I be?”

  Brenda motioned for Mel to take a right as she told Amber, “You know Felix isn’t going to spare you, right? He may’ve told you that, but along with losing his mind he’s become full of shit too.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  Brenda heard the legitimacy in her question. She had no idea.

  “Amber, I need you to listen to me. Are you still in the Twin Cities?”

  “Why? I mean no. I moved. Years ago. I’m in Toronto now. Love it here. It’s just so…Canadian.”

  “Cut the shit. Felix is setting us all up to kill each other. I think he’s sent Merritt Plains to—”

  Amber cut her off with a hitching, high-pitched laugh. “Are you for real? Fuck off, nutcase.”

  “I have reason to believe Felix is trying to get everyone who works for him to kill each other. Why, I don’t know, but take this as a friendly heads-up. Take it or leave it.” Brenda and Mel were now well into the suburbia grid, Brenda motioning turn left and then right, right and a left.

  Amber said, “It seems people who kill other people for a living might not exactly be best buddies with my good friend Mr. Reality. If you hear a click in a second, Brenda, don’t let yourself get paranoid, all right? It’ll just be me hanging up on your psycho-killer ass. Okay? Okay. Bye-bye now.”

  “Amber. Fucking listen to me. You can have a head start. I suggest you use it.”

  There was a long moment of dead air before Amber said, “All right, check it out. I’m going to send you the address Felix was making this big-ass deal over making sure you got it – here it comes, sent – so, now, you can either go to the drop or go fuck yourself. Whichever you prefer. I really don’t give a shit. Bye, bitch.”

  “Wait,” Brenda said. “I think I heard something. Amber, did you hear that?”

  Still on the line, Amber said, “You heard what?”

  Brenda reached over in front of Mel and mashed the rental car’s horn – and heard it in stereo, coming from the car’s hood and on a half-second delay, coming through on Amber’s end of the line too.

  They were stopped outside a beige one-story house. There was a car in the driveway, covered with snow, and the driveway looked like it hadn’t been shoveled in weeks. The curtains moved. “Get out,” Brenda told Mel.

  “Wait. Are you going to kill her?”

  “There’s a pretty good chance it’ll come to that, yes.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just being honest. Get out. You’re coming in with me. We need to get in there before she calls someone.”

  “I’ll stay here. I’ll stay in the car. I won’t go anywhere.”

  “Get out.” When Mel still didn’t get out, Brenda drew her gun and mashed it into the girl’s ribs. “Melanie, out of the car. Now. Move.”

  Before she got out, Brenda reached into the back seat and dug through Mel’s backpack, and brought out her lockpick.

  Brenda had Mel walk in front of her approaching the side door of the house, pressing the gun into her spine. Mel raised her arms, the one in the cast and the other shaking like a leaf on a tree, and Brenda poked her harder with the gun. “Put your fucking arms down. What will the
neighbors think?” She glanced around. She didn’t see any of the neighbors watching them approaching the house. “We’re just paying our friend a visit for a nice Sunday brunch, just us girls, that’s all this is.”

  As they neared the door, Brenda could hear Amber banging around inside, things crashing, the work-from-home payroll clerk having a full-on meltdown. Brenda used the lockpick and pushed the door back. She shoved Mel in ahead and hunched behind her, peeking over her shoulder, guiding Mel into Amber’s kitchen. She wasn’t there, but there was barely enough room to walk with the trash piled on the floor and countertops. Overflowing trash bags and cardboard boxes. Crushed cigarette packs, greasy TV dinner trays. But mostly empty beer and liquor bottles. So many liquor bottles.

  Brenda moved Mel into the living room. A coffee table covered in beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays. A heap of burner phones and two laptops stood side by side on a collapsible card table. Spreadsheets. People’s names. Locations, dollar amounts. The TV was on, a paused episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar with wooden stake in hand frozen mid-blink. In the middle of the well-worn carpet a prosthetic leg lay, wearing a bunny slipper. The slipper’s match, and rest of Amber Hawthorne, was nowhere to be seen.

  Commotion up the hall, things crashing, Amber’s voice going, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Brenda kept a hold on Mel by a fistful of her coat and turned her to stay ahead of her, calling over her shoulder, “Amber. We’re in your house. You might as well come out.”

  “I have a gun,” Amber said from up the hall.

  “No, I don’t think you do.”

  “How would you know? I might. Maybe Felix gave me one, for protection. For when some asshole like you decided to pull something like this.”

  “Then come on out, let me see it.”

  Amber didn’t come out. “How did you know where I live?”

  “Felix brought me by last year, to have us put a face to each other’s name. I’m not surprised you don’t remember.” Brenda looked at the several drained vodka bottles peeking out from under the girl’s sofa. “You were so far in the bag you were practically coming out the other side.”

  A long silence.

  Amber said, “Okay, let’s say hypothetically I don’t have a gun.”

  “All right. Hypothetically you don’t have a gun.”

  “If I come out, will you shoot me before letting me explain myself?”

  “That depends entirely on what you have to tell me.”

  “Then I think I’ll just stay back here, where I may or may not have a gun.”

  “Amber. You do not have a gun.” Brenda let go of Mel and pointed at the sofa. “Might as well park it. This might take a while.”

  Mel sat, hands on her knees, frowning at the sorry state of her new surroundings.

  “We didn’t come here with any intention of harming you, Amber, but it’s up to you whether or not it stays that way.”

  “What’s with this we shit? You bring your imaginary friends with you when you go to somebody’s house to kill them?”

  “No, they stayed home this time, but I do have Melanie out here.”

  “Melanie who? Melanie Williams, from Chicago?”

  Mel looked at Brenda the way you would when the last person you’d expect to know your name reveals that they do.

  “Yep,” Brenda said. “Melanie Williams from Chicago for one night only, live on stage.”

  “Melanie?” Amber said.

  “Yeah?” Mel said.

  “Okay, just making sure. You don’t have a gun, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Does Brenda?”

  Brenda nodded, It’s okay.

  “Yeah, she has a gun.”

  “Does she look mad?”

  “Honestly? Kind of. Maybe you should do what she says.”

  Brenda mouthed, Thank you.

  Amber said, “Do either of you see a leg out there?”

  “There’s one out here wearing a slipper. Is that the one you mean?”

  “Yes, that one. Think one of you could bring it to me?”

  Brenda looked at Mel. “Be a dear?”

  Mel obliged to pick up Amber’s leg up from the floor and walked it down the hall. Brenda remained in the living room, hand inside her coat, leaning to watch the door come open just wide enough a hand could snatch the leg out of Mel’s hands and pull it inside. The slipper had fallen off. Mel bent to pick that up too. Amber snatched it away with a curt, “Thanks.”

  Mel came back to the living room and sat again. Once she’d spotted the frozen image of the vampire slayer on Amber’s TV, she seemed to be mesmerized. Brenda could hardly blame her. It’d been something of an intense morning for the poor thing.

  Brenda checked her phone. She had four missed calls from Steve. She’d have to find another means of calling him back. This phone was now only useful to Felix, a tracking device. Brenda let the phone fall to the floor and stomped it under her boot heel, then did the same with her burner. She sifted through the pieces of the broken phones, found the sim cards, snapped them both in two, and dropped them into one of Amber’s ashtrays.

  She noticed Mel was watching her.

  “Just like the movies, right?” Brenda said.

  Amber emerged a moment later. Her strawberry-blond hair showed three inches of dark root, matted on the right side. A T-shirt that’d been laundered so many times the face of Lady Gaga screened across its chest looked more like Max Schreck now, and it was so full of holes her neon-green sports bra was quite visible. A pair of cotton shorts, sticking out of which was a flesh-and-blood leg, the skin tone just a few shades paler than that of the prosthetic one. She moved with a slight hitch in her giddy-up, keeping close watch on Brenda as she maneuvered over to the corner of the room and stood there, arms crossed. She only gave Mel a nod, her fellow trouble magnet caught in the same helpless situation. Mel returned it.

  Brenda said, “Where’s this gun I’ve heard so much about?”

  “I don’t have one, all right?” Amber said. “You win. Pleased with yourself?”

  “Call anybody?”

  “Felix. But he didn’t pick up.”

  “Leave him a message?”

  “No.”

  Brenda watched Amber notice the two smashed phones on the living room carpet and clearly need to force herself not to ask about them.

  “You didn’t leave a message saying, ‘Brenda Stockton’s in my house preparing to do something mean to me’?”

  “No. I said I didn’t leave a message.”

  “Call anybody else?”

  Amber shook her head.

  “Merritt Plains, perhaps?”

  “No. I definitely did not call Merritt fucking Plains. Even if I thought I should, I wouldn’t ever call him, for anything.”

  Brenda flashed her eyes. “Because he’s so large and scary?”

  The tubes in her neck stood out fiddle-string tight, but Amber managed to nod. Even for someone as low on the totem pole as she was, the stories must’ve trickled down.

  Brenda motioned with her gun. “Go have a seat next to Mel, where I can keep an eye on the both of you.”

  Amber did as told and the minute she had planted herself on the cushion said, “Brenda, if what you say is going down is what’s actually happening, I swear to freaking god I didn’t know. I just make sure everybody gets paid. Felix wires me the money, and I distribute who’s supposed to get what. I mean, have you ever once been paid late?”

  Brenda said nothing.

  “Didn’t think so. You have me to thank for that.”

  “The boozy twit can run a calculator. Whoopie.”

  Amber said, “I might work from home, but that doesn’t mean this job doesn’t still get stressful sometimes. Being asked to manage the money of two dozen contract killers is not as easygoing as
working retail.” Amber looked at Mel next to her on the couch. “No offense to people who work retail.”

  Brenda said, “To give you some background on Amber here, Mel, she’s no stranger to getting wrapped up with dangerous people. In fact, Captain Ahab, why don’t you regale Mel with the story of how you lost the leg? It’s a good one.”

  “Why?”

  Brenda leveled the gun. “Because I asked you to. Transparency among colleagues is always a good thing.”

  Amber took a deep breath. “Okay, so, me and my friend owned this funeral home across town and it was looking like we were going to have to close the place so I had what – in hindsight – was not a very good idea, to start selling body parts on the black market. Except, as we found out, when it’s strictly the sale of biological material, it’s called the red market. Anyhoo, one thing led to another and shit ended up getting super out of hand and a bunch of people got killed – and, well, long story short, me and my friend both ended up losing a leg. They took mine but she cut hers off herself, to try to save me. There’s a producer guy out in Hollywood who said he wants to maybe make it into a movie.”

  “I think I remember hearing about that,” Mel said.

  “You did? Did they say when they want to start casting? Do you have representation? If so, can I have their number, their email?”

  “Sorry, I meant all those people getting killed around here. That’s what I heard about.”

  “Oh,” Amber said, sad for only a moment before brightening again. “They call it the Summer of Blood,” she said, sounding strangely proud about it. “I’m not making that up. That’s even what it says on Wikipedia. The producer guy said that might make for a good name, if the movie ever gets off the ground. I told him Isla Fisher would be perfect to play me and for Jolene I suggested Zooey Deschanel. For Frank, definitely Bradley Whitford, and for—”

  “Not to interrupt,” Brenda interrupted, “but the point is, Mel, Amber here isn’t exactly what you’d call quick on the uptake. Because here she is again working for other people none of whom you’d want to take home to Mother.”