Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  “You should have,” I said.

  He was past the point of provocation. He ignored the bait.

  “The camera had a sticker on the side—it read ‘property of Scion Productions.’ ”

  “Fealy.”

  “That little fuck must have helped her with it. Who knows what else she told him.”

  “Which meant he had to die,” I said.

  Charlie nodded like I was a co-conspirator, finally getting on the same page. “Had to,” he said. “I had no choice, right?”

  “They were broken up,” I told him. “He probably had no idea she took it. She had keys to his place. She must have grabbed it when he was out east.”

  Charlie shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It was just a matter of time before I had to kill that punk. Madeline must have known it too. I don’t know what she expected me to do.”

  The righteous ravings of the mad; what can one say? He was looking for communion, some understanding for his hand being forced to inevitable evil. I couldn’t play along.

  “So,” I said, “what’s next? How are you gonna dispose of Marks and me? What do you plan on doing with your sister in there?”

  Charlie exhaled heavily. “I’ll figure it out,” he muttered. “I always do.”

  He returned to his collection of toys and knelt down before them, rummaging through the blades and the hard metals, searching for something specific. “Here we are,” he said, holding up a pair of bolt cutters. Then he felt around inside his bag and pulled out a red ball gag. “Can’t have you crying too loud about the pain, can we?” he asked.

  I realized with an awful clarity what the bolt cutters were for. He stepped toward me with the smirk of a serial killer. He was almost giddy with anticipation. First he fastened the leather straps of the gag around the back of my head and forced the red ball between my lips. He pulled it tight and slapped the back of my head. I sucked in air through my nose, panicking with the loss of oral freedom. “I always wanted to try this,” he said. “I hear it’s insanely painful.” Charlie got down on one knee in front of me. I shut my eyes, waited for the worst. I felt the blades of the bolt cutters latch around my Achilles. Then, with a grunt, Charlie pressed them together and snapped the tendon in two.

  I was screaming into the gag as he gathered the rest of his gear and left the room.

  Chapter 32

  He left me there the rest of the night. The pain came from a circle of hell beyond Dante. At some point my mind became detached from my body, and I began to regard the scene from a distance. It was as if I was watching the horror from above, already dead and hovering in a disturbed purgatory. My mind zoomed down and peered over the carnage like a Google map’s satellite image.

  I shut my eyes. Sleep was an impossible notion. I longed for rivers of whiskey and fountains of pills, anything to sink me into a state of bearable oblivion. Time began to pass. The darkness began to lighten. First blue light fell through the blinds. Outside, the sound of sirens gave me a jolt of false hope. They faded fast.

  I looked down at my stripped and shattered body and considered how many bones had been broken. I tried to shift my chair toward the window. The pain from my severed Achilles shot up my leg into my gut like fire. I bit down on the gag, dragged myself another inch. I thought I would pass out from the pain. Kept going. When I reached the window I pressed my forehead against the edge of the blind and pushed it aside until I could see through the glass. Slow moving men and women walked their dogs on the sidewalks below. A garbage truck crept down the block as disinterested garbagemen tossed bag after bag into the back. Across the way I could see lights coming on in adjacent apartments, but no one near the windows. I reared my head back and began slamming it into the glass.

  As if he’d been waiting for that cue all along, Charlie opened the door and stepped into the room. He set down his bag and leaned easily against the far wall. His blond hair glistened with new product; he looked rested and freshly showered, in another pair of pressed khakis, a starched white oxford shirt. “You’re up,” he said pleasantly. “Have a nice rest?”

  I searched out the window but no one looked up. He came to me and grabbed the back of the chair and flipped it over. I went down. Hit the back of my head against the floor. Looked up at him. He glowered down at me, eyes ablaze, kicked me in the stomach with a leather loafer. Then he reached down and dragged the chair across the room. He propped it back up next to the mattress. Marks stared back at me with dead, bloodless eyes as Charlie undid the leather straps behind my head and freed me of the gag. I gasped, sucked in air. My jaw ached; my mouth was dry as a desert.

  “What am I gonna do with you two?” he asked. “What am I supposed to tell my mother? I suppose with Marks here, once that video gets out, everyone will think he took off and tried to escape the scandal. It’s gonna break her heart.” He knelt before him and looked into his face. Charlie sighed. “It didn’t have to be like this,” he said. “Not for either of you.”

  He walked over to the window, drew up the blinds, and stared down onto the Village streets. The morning light brightened the room, filled it with dark truth. “This used to be a carriage house,” he said. “Back in the nineteenth century, built around the time of the Civil War. This neighborhood has seen every level of New Yorker since then, from poor-ass immigrants to worthless junkies to middle class families, and now, filled with folks like me—ones with real money. Back in the seventies, you could have gotten this place for fifty grand. I bought it for fourteen million—and now that’s a steal. I could unload it tomorrow for twenty.” He glanced back at me, then over to Marks. “After all this is over, I probably will. There’s an old boiler in the basement, thought I’d feed you two in there. Your ghosts can haunt the next owners.”

  “What about Madeline?” I asked.

  “Glad you asked,” he said. “Why don’t we ask her?”

  He came to me, tilted the chair forward, and I went back down to the hardwood floor. I felt the cuts in my face open, tasted more blood in my mouth. “Sit tight,” he growled. “Be back in a sec.”

  Lying on my side, I watched him leave the room, saw a light turn on down the hall, heard another door open. There were grunts and unintelligible curses as Charlie retrieved his sister. I searched the room with bleary eyes, thought about crying out, if only to provoke faster death. I don’t know why, but I kept quiet. It wasn’t survival instinct. I think I just wanted to hear what he planned to do next, with Madeline.

  She was pushed into the room soon enough. Charlie had wrapped her in a plush white robe. Her arms were tied behind her back, and he guided her by the wrists with an impatient hand. Her eyelids fluttered heavily, drugged. She staggered, shuffled her feet, perhaps the first time she’d been upright in days. She looked to me in confusion, then over to Marks. Her body tensed; she stopped moving. Charlie pulled her close against him.

  “More blood on your hands, sis,” he said.

  Madeline didn’t react. Maybe she had lost the capacity, or maybe she was doped to the gills, too high to register reality over nightmare. He pushed her down at the foot of the mattress. She sat, looked over at me.

  “Who’s that?” she slurred.

  Charlie came over and straightened up my chair once again. My broken bones burned and cried out at the rough movement. He slapped the back of my head. “Lady asked you a question,” he said.

  “My name is Duck,” I told her. “Your mom asked me to find you.”

  “My mom?” she asked.

  “She’s worried about you.”

  Madeline made a face, looked up at her brother looming by her side. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She doesn’t know.”

  “Yes, she does,” I said.

  The siblings looked to me together, rage in one set of eyes, shame in the other.

  “He’s lying,” said Charlie. “I spoke to her last night. She’s as clueless as ever.”

  Madeline sagged. I couldn’t be sure how much she was registering. Her eyes were more shut than open
, and she swayed on the edge of consciousness. Something was getting through, but it wasn’t much.

  “Tell me about James Fealy,” I said to her brother. “Tell me how you killed him.”

  She blinked, eyelids raised as she fought for more clarity. Charlie took the bait.

  “With a knife.” He smirked. “In the shower. Would you like to share the rest, Duck? You witnessed my handiwork, after all.”

  “When was it? The day your sister disappeared? After she went to his place and tried to warn him?”

  He glanced at Madeline. “Ah, Duck, are we really going to do this? My sister is in a fragile mental state at the moment. Do we really want to subject her to such dirty details?”

  “You tell me,” I said.

  He gave it a second’s thought. “Very well, I suppose you’re right. Time for our girl to hear the naked truth, isn’t it?” He rubbed at Madeline’s back. She gave a shuddered reply, tried to inch away from him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulled her back close. “It had to be done. You know that, right?” he asked her. “I’m sure you told him things you shouldn’t have. And he helped you make that fateful video, after all. Of you and this sick bastard.” Charlie motioned to Marks, then spat over his body. He turned to me.

  “She came to me,” he said. “The night after our altercation upstate. She had sobered up a bit, and she begged me to have mercy. She knew what I needed to do. Didn’t you, sis?” Madeline tensed in his grasp; Charlie squeezed her tighter. “I couldn’t grant her request, of course. That Fealy boy had to go. I paid him a visit the next day, after Madeline here became my guest at the house.” He turned and gave her a lingering, nauseating kiss on the cheek. “Tied up and good drugs—a few of her favorite things. I do hope you’ve enjoyed your stay.”

  I averted my eyes, felt a sickness in my stomach worse than the physical pain. “The cameras,” I said. “In the lobby of his building. How did you manage to turn them off?”

  Charlie beamed, proud of himself. “Nice of you to notice,” he said. “I am a man of many talents, aren’t I? Programming and hacking, it’s what got me into trading in the first place. It comes down to the same thing—how to stay a step ahead of everyone else. While my brain-dead teammates were playing video games between practices, I was teaching myself to code, learning how to break into systems. This was nothing. For a nice building, you’d think they’d try a little harder with their security, but everyone’s still so clueless. I just used this program, Metas-ploit. It was simple. I scrambled their CCTV systems for a few hours while I went by and waited for Fealy. When he arrived home, I followed him inside and let myself in with Madeline’s set of keys. It was just an extra treat that I found him in the shower. It was even easier than I expected. Then I went home and restarted their cameras, and then I got lucky again when they found that dealer’s prints all over the place. I do believe they have him in custody, isn’t that right? It’s true what they say: the harder you work, the luckier you get. I’ve proven that my whole life.”

  I remembered coming upon Fealy’s naked, slashed corpse in the pool of blood in the shower. Charlie had enjoyed himself. It had been a sort of peak performance, akin in his mind to his gold medal swims or his big days in the markets.

  “You’re a sick fuck,” I said.

  My father had once been fond of the old maxim that you should never trust a man who doesn’t drink. The man knew how to bend an elbow and had contempt for anyone who didn’t. I hadn’t learned much from him, and clearly I had failed to heed this lesson. A man afraid of alcohol is a man afraid of himself. Afraid of losing control of the demons that lurk, bubbling barely contained, beneath the surface. Even now, with his madness exposed without apology, Charlie possessed the air of clear-headed control. Another challenge faced and overcome with a bloodless resolve.

  “Hardly,” he said. “Do you remember what my boss, Danny Soto, told you? You’re just not cut from our cloth.” He looked back to Marks on the mattress. “Coach may have dug his own grave, but the man does deserve some credit. He taught me what a champion truly was. What were you, like thirteen when you left the team?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, so you quit before things even got started. All that age group stuff—that was just pussy shit. Anybody can be fast at ten or twelve, just takes some size and a bit of ability. But then the real athletes start coming on around high school, and we just trash by all those pretenders who used to beat us when we were kids.” He smiled at the memory, the tables-turned triumph. “I always hated you, Duck. We were friends, but I fucking hated you. You and your dad, a couple of big-talking frauds; even as a kid, I noticed that much. And I was right, you know? That’s the nice thing about sports and money, the thing I love about both pursuits: sooner or later, the champions emerge, the ones who want it most. The ones who are willing to do whatever it takes.”

  “Whatever it takes,” I repeated. “You’ve got that part down.”

  “Damn right,” he said. “Anyway, as for Fealy, that kid’s death led to getting a dealer off the streets, a dealer who dealt to high school and college kids. Happy ending there—two bad birds with one sharp stone. Net net, the world is a better place without them.”

  “How about Patrick Bell?” I asked. “Is the world a better place without him too?”

  The sound of the name gave a jolt of clarity to Madeline. She glared at her brother with confusion and hate in her hazy eyes. She opened her mouth to speak; no words came out. Charlie gave a sick smile.

  “Poor boy.” He sighed. “He had a deathly allergy to nuts, right, sis?”

  She looked back to him, trembling at the scarred memory.

  “You always thought it was your little kiss that did it, didn’t you?” he asked her. “No, it wasn’t that. I suppose it’s time you heard the truth. It wasn’t you. I had to take care of that boy. It was so simple, just a few drops of peanut oil in his smoothie. Do you remember those smoothies I brought out to you by the pool? To the cute young couple?” Charlie seized at the memory. The murderous instinct seemed to rush up through his body, darkening his skin with coursing black blood. “How could you blame me?” he asked her. “We had only just begun. And then you betrayed me. With that, that little boy?”

  He released his grip and shoved Madeline away. She tensed, refused to go down. She stared up at him with a purity of hate. The drug clouds behind her eyes seemed to clear like a passing storm. Her face looked worn and aged, the youth shed too soon, left only with the disregarded pieces of beauty. The high cheekbones, the heavy lidded eyes, those wide, fishy lips—accessories ready to be stripped and sold for parts. Silent tears slid down that beautiful, wrecked face. She tried to blink them away, didn’t take her eyes off of her brother.

  He did not appreciate the sight of her tears. “Now you’re crying?” he shouted. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised! After the ways you’ve betrayed me? Tortured me by acting like a whore, on camera, for the world to see? What did you expect?”

  She opened her mouth. Again, no words could rise.

  “What now, Charlie?” I asked.

  He swung around to me, eyes burning beyond rage. He moved to his bag, knelt and reached in, and brought out a butcher’s knife. Charlie waved it before me. “Now, how about I cut your throat?” he asked.

  “And Madeline, you plan on cutting hers too?” I asked. “The love of your life, the one who means more than all your medals and millions? The one you’ve killed for?”

  “That’s up to her,” he said. “That will be up to my sister.”

  He walked to her now, stood over her with shoulders shaking. “What do you say, sis? Are we even?” I thought he might even reach out a hand in reconciliation. Instead I watched as Charlie pressed the sharp edge of the knife into the palm of his hand. He looked down at it until it broke skin, flinched slightly, and raised the blade. He wiped his bleeding palm against his face, leaving a red streak from his ear to his jaw. Madness had overtaken him completely. For so long he had held it at bay. Through Olymp
ic triumphs and financial fortunes, through a public life as a shining example of our success-worshipping city: a place where anything was possible, if you had the will and the talent and maybe a few bucks behind you. But now the waters had parted to reveal the abyss below.

  Madeline looked up at him. Her face may even have softened. She tried to smile.

  “I knew you’d understand,” he said. “I knew you’d come around. Sometimes it takes a while, doesn’t it?” He reached out and petted her cheek with his bleeding palm. She started to recoil, then forced herself to lean into it.

  “Last night, before I came to bed, I realized we couldn’t continue here in this city. Too much has happened, there is just too much that puts us at risk.” He motioned toward Marks, then back at me. “I’m sure we could dispose of these gentlemen without much trouble, but we don’t need more questions, do we? It pains me to leave, but there comes a point where we must move on. I suppose we always knew this day would come, didn’t we?”

  Madeline nodded, her expression unchanged.

  “That’s my girl,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ve taken care of everything. This evening, I’ve booked us a flight to Caracas, first class out of JFK. I have our passports packed, a few bags ready to go. We won’t need much; we’ll buy whatever we need when we get there.”

  “Inspired choice,” I said. “Hard to extradite murderers from Venezuela.”

  “Just a starting point,” he said. “Thought we’d make our way down through South America.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out. Suppose you’ve got a load of cash stashed there too?”

  “Of course, Duck. One of the first things Danny Soto taught us: the minute you make real money, move some of it somewhere safe, somewhere untouchable. You never know. Danny owns like half of New Zealand, says it’s the only piece of his fortune that he trusts. I moved some of mine to the Caribbean, where it’s anonymous and will be easy to access, especially from down there. Time you saw more of the world, sis. I know how you feel about travel, but I’m confident you’ll overcome your fears in time.”