Hashimoto Blues

by Sarah Dupeyron

  He shifted in his seat to face me. “The door wasn’t locked.”

  19.

  “What the hell was I thinking? I’m so stupid,” Max said. He hung his head and covered his face with his hands.

  The car glided along the highway, carrying us farther from the city. I took my hand from the steering wheel and lightly touched his shoulder.

  “Just tell me what happened,” I said, encouraging the rest of the story from him.

  He let out a long, shaky sigh and began. “Frank started to pick the lock but it was already open. Why wouldn’t the door be locked? That should’ve been a red flag. No one would keep a place like that open with all those valuables left for anyone to walk in and take. We should’ve stopped what we were doing and given up at that point. Or at least made an effort to think about why it wasn’t locked.”

  He got quiet again. The silence was deafening.

  Just as I thought he wasn’t going to continue, he said, “They were waiting for us inside. He was there. Hashimoto. It was chaos. Everything happened so fast, I don’t even know what happened, and yet, it was in slow motion.” He shook his head. “The guy came out of nowhere, covered in those Japanese tattoos. He had a sword.”

  He started to pick at a loose thread on the dark gray leather upholstery. I could almost see him thinking, trying to choose the right words. “It bounced.”

  “What bounced?”

  “Frank’s head. Like a fucking basketball.” He turned to look at me with an expression of pure terror on his face. “Ellie, he looked at me. When it landed, we made eye contact. I think he could see me. Even worse, I think he could see himself with no head. What kind of last image is that?”

  “Don’t think about that,” I said gently. “He’s gone, and the horror of his memory with him. He’s not sitting around somewhere thinking about it. Neither should you.” I knew that was easier said than done. It was an image that would last with me forever, and I wasn’t there to witness it.

  “There was blood everywhere. Next thing I knew, that sword was coming back for me. I ducked. It clipped my arm. I grabbed the guy and hit him. I hit him as hard as I could.” He touched his bandaged hand. “Pretty hard, I guess. Then someone hit me. All I saw was this big fucking gold and black ring. I slipped on the blood and fell. I never thought falling would be a good thing, but I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t, I would’ve gotten punched again.”

  My throat tightened, and my lip began to quiver. Not now, I told myself. I pulled into the passing lane and sped past a tractor trailer, trying to keep myself focused on the moment. The speed of the car comforted me.

  “I ran. I left Frank on the fucking floor and ran.” Max looked out the window, hiding the shame on his face.

  “You couldn’t have done anything else,” I said. “They would’ve killed you, too.”

  “I hid in a dumpster.” He turned to me again. “I hid from them! I sat in that dumpster and freaked out. I threw up.”

  “It’s okay. Who wouldn’t freak out in that situation?”

  There wasn’t anything in his story that enlightened me; it just gave a clearer picture of how Frank died. Frank’s death hurt us both, and I felt bad that I pushed Max to relive it so soon.

  “Somebody told. How else would they know to wait for you like that?” I was angry someone, probably a friend, had betrayed us.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who knew about this? There’s you, me, and Frank. Obviously, it wasn’t one of us. Laurent. That other guy, what’s his name, Karl? The custodian and the artist. Anybody else?” I needed to talk it through, say it out loud.

  “I didn’t tell anyone else. I highly doubt Frank did either.”

  “Okay. Let’s assume for the moment that those are the only people who knew. Did the artist even know what you were doing with the painting?”

  “No. It wouldn’t have been her anyway. You’ve met Alice before. She doesn’t even leave her home. She’s agoraphobic.”

  “What about the custodian?”

  “I gave Jean a hundred bucks when he told me and said I’d give him a lot more if I pulled this off. He’d probably want the extra money. Besides, that’d be telling on himself if he said anything.”

  “True. Laurent?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think so either. That leaves Karl. I don’t know anything about this guy. As far as I’m concerned, he did it.”

  “Laurent trusted him enough to bring him in. I don’t know.”

  “Did you see the way he looked at you when you said he wouldn’t get an even cut? He was all twitchy and weird. What the hell was he going to do for us anyway?”

  “He was supposed to be a lookout, but never showed.”

  “There’s your answer. It was Karl.”

  It was dark when we pulled into Laurent’s driveway. The house was quiet, only a single light shining through the living room window. We got out and walked up the steps to the wide front door. It was slightly open. I looked at Max and pointed to the splintered wood next to the lock, indicating a forced entry. He arched an eyebrow at me, then pushed through the door and entered the kitchen.

  “Laurent!” he called out, his voice echoing in the empty house. “Laurent! It’s Max and Ellie!” No answer.

  He moved toward the living room, me only inches behind. He stopped short, and I crashed into his back.

  “Don’t look,” he said just as I peeked around his body. Too late. Laurent sat in a dining room chair, naked, bound at the wrists and ankles with duct tape, held upright only by the ropes that wound around his torso. His eyes stared lifelessly at us, an expression of agony and terror on his waxy face.

  Laurent’s end hadn’t been quick. There were burn marks on his arms and legs, small round holes the size of a quarter, probably made by a cigar. All of his fingers were broken, their crushed bones twisting them at awkward angles. His innards had been pulled out slowly while he was still alive, leaving snakes of intestine to spill over his lap. As a final insult, his tongue had been cut out and placed in his broken hands. I was frozen in place, staring dumbly at the horror spread before me.

  “We need to leave. Now.” Max grabbed me by the arm and headed for the door. I heard a sound to my right and turned to see a small but fierce man, obviously one of Hashimoto’s thugs, leaping toward us, a samurai sword held high. His face was twisted in an angry snarl, distorted by swollen, split lips that hung like ground meat over freshly broken and missing teeth.

  I screamed and rolled to the ground, narrowly avoiding a swinging blow. Max stepped to the side and punched our attacker with a quick left jab.

  This is the fucker who killed Frank, I thought, as I pictured Max’s abraded knuckles, the scrapes matching the gaps in the swordsman’s mouth. An image of him smashing his fist through the swordsman’s teeth flashed in my mind.

  I had never seen Max in a fight before. I had cleaned him up after a few, but this was the first time I had seen him in action. He moved with a grace and precision that defied his large frame. He dodged and blocked with ease and punched with power. It was beautiful to watch, his movements like a lethal dance.

  The Yakuza assassin had a fancy sword, but his skills didn’t match the samurai weapon he held. Not once was he able to touch Max, despite an enormous amount of effort. He was pounded repeatedly from different sides as Max bobbed and weaved around him, lashing out with fury at his friends’ killer. If it hadn’t been so terrifying, I would have been excited.

  The swordsman swung his katana in one last attempt, aiming for the tender skin of Max’s throat, drunkenly opening himself wide to attack. Max ducked then stepped forward into the other man’s space. Grabbing his opponent’s wrist in his left hand and using his right arm as a pivot, he pulled the two together, snapping the long bones of the swordsman’s forearm. The man screamed, howling like a mad elephant. Max pulled the man inward with his left hand and punched upward with his right palm, hitting his opponent squarely in the nose. The bone shattered with an audible snap an
d was driven into the man’s skull, killing him instantly.

  “Asshole,” Max mumbled under his breath as he dropped the corpse to the floor. He looked at me. “Let’s go.” He turned and walked out the door.

  I stared at the lifeless body in front of me, the eyes already glazing over. I could see the edges of an intricate tattoo peeking out of the neck of his shirt. A trickle of blood cascaded from the smashed nostrils and dripped into the grimacing mouth, the red drops catching the light before falling.

  I jumped up and followed Max out, running to catch up to him.

  “You just killed that guy!” I said, awed by what he was capable of.

  “I should’ve killed him the first time,” he replied and got in the car.

  20.

  We drove away in silence. I didn’t know which was more disturbing, seeing Laurent’s mutilated body sitting in that chair or how turned on I got by watching Max beat a guy to death. My emotions unnerved me, but as disquieted as I felt, I had to pull it together, at least until we got home. And so I drove, concentrating on the smooth ride of the BMW.

  “Wait. Take a left up here,” Max said and pointed to an intersection ahead. I signaled a turn with the blinker and slowed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to pay Karl a visit.” He was steaming.

  “You know where he lives?” I was surprised. He didn’t seem to know him that well.

  “Yes.” It came out a snarl.

  We headed back toward the city. The tires rolled soundlessly over the pavement as the car ate the highway, sucking it up like a kid gobbling candy the day after Halloween. It was a driving experience I hoped one day to replicate under better circumstances. Even though it hadn’t been my first choice, it was a great car. I loved fancy rides and enjoyed it every time I stole one.

  Despite the polished glide of the vehicle at my control, my thoughts kept returning to that fatal snap of bone in Laurent’s living room. Thinking of it, I blurted out, “You obliterated that guy’s face.”

  “Mmm,” he grunted noncommittally.

  “Is that the first time you’ve ever, um . . . You know, um . . .?” I couldn’t quite finish the question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me keep quiet.

  He understood what I was asking and replied, “No.”

  My breath caught with that one little word. I was dismayed to find he hadn’t confided this in me.

  “That’s kind of a big secret,” I said.

  “It’s not a secret. I just don’t talk about it.”

  “That’s what a secret is. Something you don’t talk about.” It came out snappy.

  “A secret’s not something you don’t talk about; it’s something you won’t talk about,” he corrected.

  “What’s the difference? It amounts to the same thing.”

  “No, it doesn’t. If this were a secret, I would’ve lied to you just now.”

  “Well, not telling me is almost as bad.” I was annoyed that he didn’t get it, that he had left me out of something that heavy. I concentrated on the road and tried not to show it.

  “Are you mad with me?” he asked.

  “No. I’m not mad. It’s not what you’ve done, it’s that you didn’t tell me about it.”

  “How was I going to tell you something like that? ‘Sorry I left for a few hours. I had to go ‘off’ someone. Merry Christmas!’”

  “You killed someone on Christmas?” That just seemed extra wrong.

  “Yes.”

  I thought back to last December 25. Frank had a huge party, at least sixty people all crammed into his tight apartment. I wore the little red dress that Max loved. He called it my “fuck me” dress. He said when I wore that, everyone around me, men, women, young, old, everyone just begged to get into my panties.

  The party was in full swing when Max and Frank went out on the porch. I could see them through the window talking, Frank out for a cigarette break and Max along to keep him company. After that, Frank came back inside alone. Max didn’t show back for over two hours. I was busy talking to the other guests and didn’t think anything of it.

  When he finally came back, he had a bottle of champagne. Now I wondered where he got it. Did he pull it out of a dead man’s refrigerator? He poured us each a glass, we toasted each other and, before we knew it, we had polished off the bottle. After, we broke into Frank’s office and made love on the desk. There was a desperate quality to it as he gripped me and pushed into me, not unlike that afternoon in our hotel room. He made some comment about not being able to resist the dress any longer and, at the time, I just thought he was a little drunk.

  “Someone told me you were out getting more drinks,” I said, a little bewildered.

  “You mean a Beer Run?” He sat back, crossed his arms and looked out the window.

  “Is that what that means?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a hit man?” I asked.

  He turned and looked at me, opened his hands in a gesture of honesty, and said, “Everyone has their specialty.”

  Holy shit! I thought. I knew he was a thief and figured that was his specialty. This new bit of information was something I had never imagined. It hadn’t occurred to me that that could have been business.

  “Is there a lot of call for that around here?”

  “No, it’s not always here. Sometimes Montreal, Boston, New York, Chicago. People like to have an outsider.”

  I opened my mouth to ask another question, too intrigued to drop the subject, but the expression he threw me made me stop.

  “Ellie, I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Not ever.” There was finality to his statement. I nodded and continued to drive, sneaking glances at him out of the corner of my eye, a new-found intrigue at what I had just discovered. I racked my brain trying to think of something to open up the conversation again.

  “I’m not making a moral judgment on you,” I finally said, hoping he’d let me continue. I wanted him to know that my questions didn’t reflect disapproval.

  “Ellie, enough.”

  Max directed me to a shitty neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The brick apartment buildings were covered in spray painted tags and teenaged kids hung around the stoops, smoking cigarettes and laughing.

  “This might get messy. You don’t have to go with me if you don’t want to.” Max looked at me, his hand resting on the door handle, an unspoken “but” left off the end of his sentence. He wanted me present for some reason.

  “I’ll go with you.” If he needed me, I’d follow him anywhere. Not to mention I didn’t want to miss out on whatever he was about to do to Karl.

  We walked up four flights of stairs and down a urine-scented corridor. The greenish cream paint was peeling off the walls, and the rug gave off a musty odor. Max knocked on a door marked 7E.

  Karl opened the door with a smile, clearly expecting someone else. His face quickly fell, the expression of contentment replaced by one of fear as he looked up to see Max.

  “Oh, shit, it’s you!” he exclaimed and stepped back into his dreary apartment. Max followed him in, bending down to get his face inches in front of Karl’s.

  “Who were you expecting?”

  “Not you,” Karl sputtered.

  “Someone?”

  “No! No one! Just not you!” He blinked quickly, like he expected to get slapped.

  “Why is that? Because you thought I’d be dead?”

  “No! What? Je ne comprends pas! Putain! ” The little man started to shake with fear.

  Speaking his words in the French Canadian’s native language to punctuate the gravity of his meaning, Max said, “Si tu me ments, je te casse la gueule, fils de pute.”

  “I get it!” Karl whined and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’ll tell the truth!”

  “Who did you expect?”

  “A woman!” If Karl was expecting a woman, it had to be a prostitute.

  Max gripped the front of Karl’s shirt and led him
all the way across the room to the sliding glass doors and out onto the balcony. He held him against the railing. Karl squirmed helplessly and made apologetic mewlings.

  “Listen, fuckface, you tell me one more lie and I drop you over the side of the balcony, got it?” Max spit the words out in Karl’s face. Karl nodded rapidly, his glasses shaking down his beaked nose, his bad toupee falling askew.

  “Where were you this afternoon?” He leaned in, his nose almost touching Karl’s.

  “I was home. Laurent told me not to do it! He said it wasn’t worth it.” He squeaked the words out in a single rush of breath. His eyes were huge behind their dark frames, the yellowed sclera rolling around in trepidation.

  “That’s convenient.” Max rolled his own eyes in disbelief. “What did you tell them?”

  “Who? Max, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered. He was quaking all over, shaking harder than a bowl of Jell-O in a stampede.

  “Oh, I think you do know. Tell me everything, you little shit.” He shook him harder and lifted him off the ground, leaning ever so slightly over the railing to give effect.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Karl wailed. “No! Please, don’t. Don’t!” A wet stain spread across the front of his pants, his terror causing his bladder to release.

  “You fucking pig!” Max yelled at him in disgust and threw him into the white plastic chair Karl left out for smoking breaks, not wanting to get any urine on himself.

  Max pulled the empty gun out, resting the cold barrel on Karl’s temple.

  “I’m not lying! Je te jure! ” Karl’s buggy eyes managed to pop out of their sockets even farther as he shook his head back and forth.

  Max looked over at me, still holding the gun against Karl’s head. “What do you think? Does he know anything?” That’s why Max wanted me there. He wanted me to read Karl, see if he was being honest with us.

  “I don’t think we’re going to get anything from this,” I said shaking my head. I didn’t trust Karl, but after seeing him piss his pants in pure fright without spilling his guts, I didn’t think he was the culprit. Under the circumstances, Max looked pretty scary, and I was sure if Karl did know something, he would have let the cat out of the bag. Throwing him off the balcony wasn’t going to get us anywhere, anyway, and Max certainly wasn’t going to shoot him with an empty gun. “We should just get out of here before anyone shows up.”