A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  “ ‘Thank you’?” The voice on the phone sounded baffled. “Whatta you mean, ‘thank you’? Didn’t you see the rest?”

  Munir went cold all over. He tried to speak but words would not come. It felt as if something were stuck in his throat. Finally, he managed a few words.

  “Rest? What rest?”

  “I think you’d better take another look in that envelope, Mooo-neeer. Take a real good look before you think about thankin’ me. I’ll call you back later.”

  “No–!”

  The line went dead.

  Panic exploded within Munir as he hung up and rushed backed to the foyer.

  Didn’t you see the rest?

  What rest? Please, Allah, what did he mean? What was he saying?

  He snatched up the stiff envelope. Yes, something still in it. A bulge at the bottom, wedged into the corner. He smacked the open end of the envelope against the floor.

  Once. Twice.

  Something tumbled out. Something in a small zip-loc bag.

  Short. Cylindrical. A pale, dusky pink. Bloody red at the ragged end.

  Munir jammed the back of his wrist against his mouth. To hold back the screams. To hold back the vomit.

  And the inscription on Barbara’s photograph came back to him.

  She watched.

  The phone began to ring.

  7

  “Take it easy, guy,” Jack said to the sobbing man slumped before him. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Jack didn’t believe that, and he doubted Munir did either, but he didn’t know what else to say. Hard enough to deal with a sobbing woman. What do you say to a blubbering man?

  He’d been on his way home from Gia’s over on Sutton Square when he stopped off at the St. Moritz to make one last call to his voice mail. He never used his apartment phone for that and did his best to randomize the times and locations of his calls. When he was on Central Park South he rarely passed up a chance to call in from the lobby of the Plaza or one of its high-priced neighbors.

  He heard Munir’s grief-choked voice: “Please . . . I have no one else to call. He’s hurt Robby! He’s hurt my boy! Please help me, I beg you!”

  Jack couldn’t say what was behind the impulse. He didn’t want to, but a moment later he found himself calling Munir back, coaxing an address out of the near-hysterical man, and coming over here. He’d pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves before entering the Turtle Bay high-rise where Munir’s apartment was located. He was sure this mess was going to end up in the hands of officialdom and he wished to leave behind nothing that belonged to him, especially his fingerprints.

  Munir had been so glad to see him, so grateful to him for coming that Jack practically had to peel the man off of him.

  He helped him to the kitchen and found a heavy meat cleaver lying on the table there. Several deep gouges, fresh ones, marred the tabletop. Jack finally got him calmed down.

  “Where is it?”

  “There.” He pointed to the upper section of the refrigerator. “I thought if maybe I kept it cold . . .”

  Munir slumped forward on the table, face-down, his forehead resting on the arms crossed before him. Jack opened the freezer compartment and pulled out the plastic bag.

  It was a finger. A kid’s. The left pinkie. Cleanly chopped off. Probably with the cleaver in the photo of a more delicate portion of the kid’s anatomy he’d seen earlier this evening.

  The son of a bitch.

  And then the photograph of the boy’s mother. And the inscription.

  Jack felt a surge of blackness from the abyss within him. He willed it back. He couldn’t get involved in this, couldn’t let it get personal. He turned to look back at the kitchen table and found Munir staring at him.

  “Do you see?” Munir said, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “Do you see what he has done to my boy?”

  Jack quickly stuffed the finger back into the freezer.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about this but nothing’s changed. You still need more help than one guy can offer. You need the cops.”

  Munir shook his head violently. “No! You haven’t heard his latest demand! The police can not help me with this! Only you can! Please, come listen.”

  Jack followed him down a hall. He passed a room with an inflatable fighter jet hanging from the ceiling and a New York Giants banner tacked to the wall. In another room at the end of the hall he waited while Munir’s trembling fingers fumbled with the rewind controls. Finally he got it playing. Jack barely recognized Munir’s voice as he spewed his grief and rage at the caller. Then the other voice laughed.

  VOICE: Well, well. I guess you got my little present.

  MUNIR: You vile, filthy, perverted –

  VOICE: Hey-hey, Mooo-neeer. Let’s not get too personal here. This ain’t between you’n me. This here’s a matter of international diplomacy.

  MUNIR: How . . . (a choking sound) how could you?

  VOICE: Easy, Mooo-neeer. I just think about how your people blew my brother to bits and it becomes real easy. Might be a real good idea for you to keep that in mind from here on in.

  MUNIR: Let them go and take me. I’ll be your prisoner. You can . . . you can cut me to pieces if you wish. But let them go, I beg you!

  VOICE: (laughs) Cut you to pieces! Mooo-neeer, you must be psychic or something. That’s what I’ve been thinking too! Ain’t that amazing?

  MUNIR: You mean you’ll let them go?

  VOICE: Someday—when you’re all the way through the wringer. But let’s not change the subject here. You in pieces—now that’s a thought. Only I’m not going to do it. You are.

  MUNIR: What do you mean?

  VOICE: Just what I said, Mooo-neeer. I want a piece of you. One of your fingers. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one. But I want you to chop it off and have it ready to send to me by tomorrow morning.

  MUNIR: Surely you can’t be serious!

  VOICE: Oh, I’m serious, all right. Deadly serious. You can count on that.

  MUNIR: But how? I can’t!

  VOICE: You’d better find a way, Mooo-neeer. Or the next package you get will be a bit bigger. It’ll be a whole hand. (laughs) Well, maybe not a whole hand. One of the fingers will already be missing.

  MUNIR: No! Please! There must be –

  VOICE: I’ll call in the mornin’ t’tell you how to deliver it. And don’t even think about goin’ to the cops. You do and the next package you get’ll be a lot bigger. Like a head. Chop-chop, Mooo-neeer.

  He switched off the machine and turned to Jack.

  “You see now why I need your help?”

  “No. I’m telling you the police can do a better job of tracking this guy down.”

  “But will the police help me cut off my finger?”

  “Forget it!” Jack said, swallowing hard. “No way.”

  “But I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried but I can’t make my hand hold still. I want to but I just can’t do it myself.” Munir looked him in the eyes. “Please. You’re my only hope. You must.”

  “Don’t pull that on me.” Jack wanted out of here. Now. “Get this: Just because you need me doesn’t mean you own me. Just because I can doesn’t mean I must. And in this case I honestly doubt than I can. So keep all of your fingers and dial 9-1-1 to get some help.”

  “No!” Anger overcame the fear and anguish in Munir’s face. “I will not risk their lives!”

  He strode back to the kitchen and picked up the cleaver. Jack was suddenly on guard. The guy was nearing the end of his rope. No telling what he’d do.

  “I wasn’t man enough to do it before,” he said, hefting the cleaver. “But I can see I’ll be getting no help from you or anyone else. So I’ll have to take care of this all by myself!”

  Jack stood back and watched as Munir slammed his left palm down on the table top, splayed the fingers, and angled the hand around so the thumb was pointing somewhere past his left flank. Jack didn’t move to stop him. Munir was doing what he thought he had to do. He raised the cl
eaver above his head. It poised there a moment, wavering, like a cliff diver with second thoughts, then with a whimper of fear and dismay, Munir drove the cleaver into his hand.

  Or rather into the table top where his hand had been.

  Weeping, he collapsed into the chair then, and his sobs of anguish and self-loathing were terrible to hear.

  “All right, goddammit,” Jack said. He knew this was going to be nothing but trouble, but he’d seen and heard all he could stand. He kicked the nearest wall. “I’ll do it.”

  8

  “Ready?”

  Munir’s left hand was lashed to the tabletop. Munir himself was loaded up with every painkiller he’d had in the medicine cabinet—Tylenol, Advil, Bufferin, Anacin 3, Nuprin. Some of them were duplicates. Jack didn’t care. He wanted Munir’s pain center deadened as much as possible. He wished the guy drank. He’d have much preferred doing this to someone who was dead drunk. Or doped up. Jack could have scored a bunch of Dilaudids for him. But Munir had said no to both. No booze. No dope.

  Tight-ass.

  Jack had never cut off anybody’s finger before. He wanted to do this right. The first time. No misses. Half an inch too far to the right and Munir would lose only a piece of his pinkie; half an inch too far to the left and he’d be missing the ring finger as well. So Jack had made himself a guide. He’d found a plastic cutting board, a quarter-inch thick, and had notched one of its edges. Now he was holding the board upright with the notch clamped over the base of Munir’s pinkie; the rest of his hand was safe behind the board. All Jack had to do to sever the finger cleanly was chop down as hard as he could along the vertical surface.

  That was all.

  Easy.

  Right.

  “I am ready,” Munir said.

  He was dripping with sweat. His dark eyes looked up at Jack, then he nodded, stuffed a dish rag in his mouth, and turned his head away.

  Swell, Jack thought. I’m glad you’re ready. But am I?

  Now or never.

  He steadied the cutting board, raised the cleaver. He couldn’t do this.

  Got to.

  He took a deep breath, tightened his grip –

  – and drove the cleaver into the wall.

  Munir jumped, turned, pulled the dishrag from his mouth.

  “What? Why–?”

  “This isn’t going to work.” Jack let the plastic cutting board drop and began to pace the kitchen. “Got to be another way. He’s got us on the run. We’re playing this whole thing by his rules.”

  “There aren’t any others.”

  “Yeah, there are.”

  Jack continued pacing. One thing he’d learned over the years was not to let the other guy deal all the cards. Let him think he had control of the deck while you changed the order.

  Munir wriggled his fingers. “Please. I cannot risk angering this madman.”

  Jack swung to face him. An idea was taking shape.

  “You want me in on this?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then we do it my way. All of it.” He began working at the knots that bound Munir’s arm to the table. “And the first thing we do is untie you. Then we make some phone calls.”

  9

  Munir understood none of this. He sat in a daze, sipping milk to ease a stomach that quaked from fear and burned from too many pills. Jack was on the phone, but his words made no sense.

  “Yeah, Pete. It’s me. Jack . . . Right. That Jack. Look, I need a piece of your wares . . . small piece. Easy thing . . . Right. I’ll get that to you in an hour or two. Thing is, I need it by morning. Can you deliver? . . . Great. Be by later. By the way—how much? . . . Make that two and you got a deal . . . All right. See you.”

  Then he hung up, consulted a small address book, and dialed another number.

  “Hey, Teddy. It’s me. Jack . . . Yeah, I know, but this can’t wait till morning. How about opening up your store for me? I need about ten minutes inside . . . That’s no help to me, Teddy. I need to get in now. Now . . . Okay. Meet you there in twenty.”

  Jack hung up and took the glass from Munir’s hands. Munir found himself taken by the upper arm and pulled toward the door.

  “Can you get us into your office?”

  Munir nodded. “I’ll need my ID card and keys, but yes, they’ll let me in.”

  “Get them. There a back way out of here?”

  Munir took him down the elevator to the parking garage and out the rear door. From there they caught a late-cruising gypsy cab down to a hardware store on Bleecker Street. The lights inside were on but the sign in the window said CLOSED. Jack told the cabby to wait and knocked on the door. A painfully thin man with no hair whatsoever, not even eyebrows, opened the door.

  “You coulda broke in, Jack,” he said. “I wouldna minded. I need my rest, y’know.”

  “I know, Teddy” Jack said. “But I need the lights on for this and I couldn’t risk attracting that kind of attention.”

  Munir followed Jack to the paint department at the rear of the store. They stopped at the display of color cards. Jack pulled a group from the brown section and turned to him.

  “Give me your hand.”

  Baffled, he watched as Jack placed one of the color cards against the back of Munir’s hand, then tossed it away. And again. One after another until –

  “Here we go. Perfect match.”

  “We’re buying paint?”

  “No. We’re buying flesh—specifically, flesh with Golden Mocha number 169 skin. Let’s go.”

  And then they were moving again, waving good bye to Teddy, and getting back into the cab.

  To the East Side now, up First Avenue to Thirty-first Street. Jack ran inside with the color card, then came out and jumped back into the cab empty-handed.

  “Okay. Next stop is your office.”

  “My office? Why?”

  “Because we’ve got a few hours to kill and we might as well use them to look up everyone you fired in the past year.”

  Munir thought this was futile but he had given himself into Jack’s hands. He had to trust him. And as exhausted as he was, sleep was out of the question.

  He gave the driver the address of the Saud Petrol offices.

  10

  “This guy looks promising,” Jack said, handing him a file. “Remember him?”

  Until tonight, Munir never had realized how many people he hired and fired—“down-sized” was the current euphemism—in the course of a year. He was amazed.

  He opened the file. Richard Hollander. The name didn’t catch until he read the man’s performance report.

  “Not him. Anyone but him.”

  “Yeah? Why not?”

  “Because he was so . . .” As Munir searched for the right word, he pulled out all he remembered about Hollander, and it wasn’t much. The man hadn’t been with the company long, and had been pretty much a nonentity during his stay. Then he found the word he was looking for. “Ineffectual.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. He never got anything done. Every assignment, every report was either late or incomplete. He had a wonderful academic record—good grades from an Ivy League school, that sort of thing—but he proved incapable of putting any of his learning into practice. That was why he was let go.”

  “Any reaction? You know, shouting, yelling, threats?”

  “No.” Munir remembered giving Hollander his notice. The man had merely nodded and begun emptying his desk. He hadn’t even asked for an explanation. “He knew he’d been screwing up. I think he was expecting it. Besides, he had no southern accent. It’s not him.”

  Munir passed the folder back but instead of putting it away, Jack opened it and glanced through it again.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Accents can be faked. And if I was going to pick the type who’d go nuts for revenge, this guy would be it. Look: He’s unmarried, lives alone—”

  “Where does it say he lives alone?”

  “It doesn’t. But his emergency contact is his
mother in Massachusetts. If he had a lover or even a roomie he’d list them, wouldn’t you think? ‘No moderating influences,’ as the head docs like to say. And look at his favorite sports: swimming and jogging. This guy’s a loner from the git-go.”

  “That does not make him a psychopath. I imagine you are a loner, too, and you . . .”

  The words dribbled away as Munir’s mind followed the thought to its conclusion.

  Jack grinned. “Right, Munir. Think about that.”

  He reached for the phone and punched in a number. After a moment he spoke in a deep, authoritative voice: “Please pick up. This is an emergency. Please pick up.” A moment later he hung up and began writing on a note pad. “I’m going to take down this guy’s address for future reference. It’s almost four a.m. and Mr. Hollander isn’t home. His answering machine is on, but even if he’s screening his calls, I think he’d have responded to my little emergency message, don’t you?”

  Munir nodded. “Most certainly. But what if he doesn’t live there anymore?”

  “Always a possibility.” Jack glanced at his watch. “But right now I’ve got to go pick up a package. You sit tight and stay by the phone here. I’ll call you when I’ve got it.”

  Before Munir could protest, Jack was gone, leaving him alone in his office, staring at the gallery family photos arrayed on his desk. He began to sob.

  11

  The phone startled Munir out of a light doze. Confusion jerked him upright. What was he doing in his office? He should be home . . .

  Then he remembered.

  Jack was on the line: “Meet me downstairs.”

  Out on the street, in the pale, predawn light, two figures awaited him. One was Jack, the other a stranger—a painfully thin man of Munir’s height with shoulder-length hair and a goatee. Jack made no introductions. Instead he led them around a corner to a small deli. He stared through the open window at the lights inside.

  “This looks bright enough,” Jack said.

  Inside he ordered two coffees and two cheese Danish and carried them to the rearmost booth in the narrow, deserted store. Jack and the stranger slid into one side of the booth, Munir the other, facing them. Still no introductions.