Posted by Menagerie on November 15, 2005 at 21:55:26:
WILD GAME
The rented car slowly, cautiously, backed up the winding gravel road. Hanging out the driver's side window, a comical face; the sharp nose and thick lips partially obscured by a hat and dark glasses, but the man's mouth hung ajar as he spun the wheel to and fro, trying to follow the precarious twists and turns. As he cut the wheel, rock flew; the car was not cooperating.
"Sonofa--!" he proclaimed as the wheels spun and then caught; it had rained, the gravel was slick. The older man was standing at the top of the hill, his arms gesturing first one way, then another. Finally, the vehicle lurched over the edge and came to a rest, and the man held his arms out, palms out, stop here. "You're getting better, Judy," he yelled.
Judy grimaced and cut the engine. The door swung open; he was short, but big. Wide shoulders stretched out his trench coat impressively, like a pair of wings bunched beneath the fabric. "I came near to rolling this thing," he said, and stretched out a hand. "How's business, Shelly?"
The old man shook. "Slow, slow," he said. "You're the first all month, but more are coming. JJ actually got me the papers on time--not that I don't trust you," and Judy smirked. "I wouldn't do that to you, Shelly," he said. "Here she is."
Judy popped the trunk, revealing the huddled figure, wrapped in a sheet. He reached in, turned it over; Shelly saw the vacant blue eyes set in a face pale as bleach, the mouth hanging slightly open. A trickle of blood running from the corner. A look of utter amazement. "Caught her by surprise, did you?" he asked, checking the woman's face against a sheet of paper.
"A clean hit," Judy nodded. "No chase; no fuss. I like it that way anymore. I'm getting too old to hunt them down." He reached down, grunted as he lifted the form out of the trunk, flipped her over his shoulder. "The shop is ready," said Shelly, closing the trunk for him. "Set her on the first table, and I'll get the payment schedule."
The small building at the top of the hill was unique in that it had no windows. There was a skylight, and a chimney, but the facade was a faded, smooth, unbroken gray, just an oversized door set in the center. It always creaked, sounded like a damned haunted house to Judy, as he struggled to lug the sheeted figure in. “Sonofa--,” he said again, huffing and puffing, and then they were through, and he landed her on the table with a thump.
The abattoir had been recently cleaned. The old hooks shone in the light from the skylight; the cooler was wiped free of bloody handprints. Fresh rolls of butcher paper and plastic wrap hung from the walls. Judy looked around, then looked down again, down at the sightless blue eyes. He hadn’t exactly told the old man straight; she’d been a struggle, almost more than he could handle. Judy sighed. Couple more, he thought, and I’ll go feed pigeons in the park.
Shelly emerged from the small office in the front. “Twenty-five,” he said. “There’s a premium for weight and another one, this time, for quality. Customer was dissatisfied last time. Points for fat, points for lean. Help me get her onto the scale.”
The scale was attached to a meat hook. The two men unwrapped the woman’s body. The rest of her was just as chalky pale; she had a hard look to her, kind of like balloons filled with cement. “She’s pretty well filled out,” said Shelley, as they lifted the corpse; the old man deftly positioned her so the hook would spear her beneath the shoulder bone, and the point neatly emerged through the flesh. There was no blood.
The digital readout flashed erratically and came to a rest at one-seven-nine. Shelly spun her around, held a metal tube up to the small of her back. “Point-four-two depth,” he said, and moved the tube around, pressed a button. “Eleven-point-six around. This’ll be good money, my friend. We need more bad girls like her.”
Judy grudged a grin. “Very, very bad,” he said. “I’ll just get a sliver of what she got. But at least I’ll get to keep it…”
He looked up at his prey; the stark naked woman just stared back, in dumb, empty amazement. Judy grinned, folded his arms, as the finicky old man got together his tools. Long, thin knives; plastic bags; small, rotary saws that whizzed into action at the touch of a button. As Shelley took the measure of her soft, full belly, and prepared to again eviscerate a female carcass, to ready it for another long journey…the look on the former business executive’s face seemed to say, “What am I doing here?”
Lisa had it all. MBA with honors from Wharton. Whiz kid with the books, graduated quickly from Accounting to Senior Management. Enough stock options to paper the NYSE, a chalet in Zurich, a hacienda in Monterrey. Corporate turnaround artist at 30, came in with a meat cleaver and left with suitcases full of money, and scattered bodies in her wake.
And that was just what Amalgamated Smurfit wanted. The cardboard packaging business was up a tree, pun intended. The union was bleeding them dry; the competition was using illegally logged lumber from the Amazon to undercut them so much they needed a styptic pencil. The AmalSmurf board desperately turned to Lisa, who thought her fat-paring days were over, who had settled down, satisfied with making a few mill a year doling out much sought after advice on the Street.
“You want me to what?” she squeaked. Lisa was imposing, the auburn hair in a fierce chop back, the silky gray business suit and crisp bone blouse just a little snug against a body that used to cut down foes on the field hockey turf as easily as she now slashed payrolls. “Larry, Larry, I’m flattered, but-“
The voice on the other end sang of despair, of profits going down the toilet as surely as the company’s trademark asswipe, of executives preparing to do swan dives off the ledge of their 50-story tower in downtown Portland. “For you, Larry,” Lisa said, finally, “I’ll think about it. OK?”
If Larry could have done so through the phone, he would have kissed Lisa’s feet. She settled for an unabashed profession of sheer lust from the AmalSmurf CFO, and then dove into her endless corporate files and looked the company up. Get a load of those assets, she smirked, and those titles. And Lisa saw through the little flow chart on the screen, and the colorful map with icons that looked like the trees AmalSmurf chops down by the millions. She looked, and saw green, a mountain of green. And Larry, that dolt who got his job because his great-uncle had felled the first poplar for the company’s mills, would never figure it out.
That was Lisa’s real secret. She had bled every company white she’d put the fix on, and they never knew it. She knew legerdemain with ledgers these old school yokels had never dreamed of; she always picked projects run by old farts who were a little too rigid, a little too old school, a whole lot old fashioneds at the club until 4 am. By the time they shook off their hangovers, Lisa was out the door, another suitcase full of money in her well-manicured hands. The stockholders were happy, the board got their bonuses, no one was the wiser.
And so it would be with AmalSmurf. As payrolls were slashed, as downtime piled up, standing timber values appreciated, and Lisa got her bonuses for reducing expenses and appreciating assets. Meanwhile, she bought back stock under aliases, transferred money that was claimed as derivatives losses, and just plain forgot, once in a while, to carry the zero. Lisa smiled evilly, the candy-pink lipstick curled up around the angel-white cheeks. They’d never find all the booby-traps she put in the books, she knew, as she patiently explained to shareholders the whys and wherefores, and graciously accepted her eight digit incentive payment. AmalSmurf was one gravy train that was waiting for its Jesse James.
And she was right, in a sense. Larry would never have figured it out. It was his nephew, nepotistically brought in as a Systems Analyst, even though all he had was a GED. But he knew numbers, knew them instinctively, and he knew something was bogus when he ran the books. He looked it all up, and then he looked up Lisa’s record with the cosmetics firm, and with the toy company, and with the distiller all the same. Money disappeared, and the board was fat and happy and never knew it. He called Unk. Unk bought it.
Lisa’s corner office was empty by the time company security arrived. Larry pushed the DA to get Lisa on a RICO rap, but the grand jury didn’t understand her bookkeeping mumbo-jumbo any more than the stockholders had. Larry was plenty worried; Lisa was out there somewhere with stock options, and if she exercised them before the end of the year, his own investment in the company would shrivel into the company’s well known brand of comfort tissue.
None of the loverboys Lisa had strung along, just as she had the companies, had any idea where she was. Larry didn’t know if he’d ever get his $150 billion back. But he did want Lisa. And his nephew knew who to call.
They’re known only as The Company. They only have a half-dozen employees. Everything else is under contract--the suppliers, the purveyors. They got started in the detective business, snapping pics through motel windows, creeping into yards in the dead of night to slip a couple of innocuous-looking leads onto telephone cables. Back then, all they brought back was evidence.
They crossed over into the bounty business, bringing them back alive, men as well as women. But The Company found its true calling when the founder--a lean, sinewy, tobacco-chewing Texan known as JJ--got a call from one of those sheikdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the ones higher than it is tall, with the big buildings they need to stack all their money in. The British accent on the other end wanted his runaway wife returned, thank you very much. Money? Oh, ho, ho, ho. No object; name your price. JJ thought of a price, then tripled it and quoted it. Deal, said Nigel or Abdul or whatever.
The wife was a breeze; she was living with some muscle boy stud in Allen Park, Michigan. A conk on the head, a steamer trunk, and they were on their way to Camel Country, JJ in First Class, the wifey in Baggage. The limo was waiting, and the Texan and his cargo received a sirens-blaring escort to the Royal Estate, all 692 acres of it.
JJ had seen 692 acres of cotton in Lubbock, but this was something else. Everything shone like gold; ceilings were so high, you expected clouds. Big statues, big fountains. And people milling all over the place, bustling around with briefcases and boxes and earnest conversations. JJ thought he’d seen oil money back home in the Panhandle; to these cats, that was tip money. And then the Grand Poobah’s Secretary tapped him on the shoulder, handed him the check--“A generous bonus,” he told the popeyed gumshoe, “for your diligence”--and invited him to the evening’s celebration.
Well, sure, reunited with the wife, JJ figured, why not? He shaved for a change, draped the brown suit over his spare frame and boots, and sauntered into a ballroom that made him think of that baseball park they used to have in Houston. The first surprise was the Poobah, a smiling young man in multicolored robes and sunglasses, who thanked JJ effusively for his efforts. The second was the wives; as they tittered behind their veils, the Poobah introduced them all. JJ stopped counting at 14. The prodigal wife was nowhere to be seen.
That led to the third surprise. A gong sounded; the guests sat. Servants emerged, bearing an enormous brass platter with an ornate, domed cover. They set it down; JJ’s nostrils twitched. Something sure smelled good, and then the Poobah clapped, and the lid was removed.
The something was the runaway wife. She had been roasted to a deep brown, and was sprawled on the platter, belly down and surrounded by colorful fruit, her flesh shining in the overhead light of the PoobahDome. JJ was glad there was no tobacco allowed around here, because he would surely have swallowed his chaw. He just stared, as expert chefs pared slices of meat from the woman’s cooked frame and plopped them onto plates. The hubbub in the room was soon replaced by the murmur of dignified guests, chowing down.
JJ had to be polite; he didn’t know what part of the wife he’d gotten, but it was OK, not too different from meat off one of those razorbacks they used to bag in the Piney Woods. At first, he felt a pang of remorse; the babe had been perfectly happy shacked up with Adonis up there in Motown. Now, here she was, dinner. Then, he thought about the slip of paper in his pocket and the abundant number of zeroes affixed thereto, and he thought, Damn. “’Scuse me,” he asked the Poobah. “Is this a reg-yoo-lar part o’ your diet?”
The exalted leader’s smile widened, and JJ thought, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
As it turned out, the sheik rarely needed JJ's services; his wives tended to stay put. But he had friends, and connections, and it wasn't long before there was a Dutch-accented voice on the other end of The Company's unlisted phone, pleading for JJ's help.
The Nederlander needed JJ's help because his top scientist was defecting to a rival. Born in Punjab, educated at Berkeley, she--yes, she--was the world's foremost cat cracking authority. International law had failed him; he was going to lose millions--no, hundreds of millions--if she spilled her knowledge to the competition
JJ thought he'd taken a side trip from Rotterdam to Santa's workshop; he'd never seen so much ornately carved wood in his life. He was in an executive office as big as all outdoors, sitting at a mahogany desk the size of an aircraft carrier, across from one of the world's most powerful men. The oil company exec was stocky, pale, balding, and nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. "Please," he said earnestly, his watery, blue eyes fixed directly on JJ. "You will help, yes?"
This was a new venture for JJ, actually bumping somebody off, and he had to think very carefully about it. He'd already delivered the sheik's wife into the hands of her butchers, and had received for his trouble a check the size of the national debt of a Third World nation. Not to mention a chunk of her--he still thought about that, smacking his lips a little. The exec was a regular visitor to the PoobahDome; in addition to the foul deed, he wanted JJ to deliver the Prodigal Chemist to the sheik. No problem, said the Texan, doubling his already agreed upon and exorbitant fee. The exec, relieved, broke into a friendly smile that reminded JJ of those wartime pictures of Herman Goering.
This assignment would be a little trickier than a bimbo shacked up with a beach bum. The scientist, a trim and intense woman in her mid-40's, had been surrounded by employees of the rival refiner since she switched her allegiance. The Dutchman knew where she was, a resort in Zurich; all JJ had to do was evade the bodyguards, pop her, and spirit her mortal remains back to PoobahLand for the big party. The lanky Texan sighed; he was going to need some help.
Marion Judiszczkiewicz was a dapper dude in those days. He'd developed his physique by blocking for the Princeton Tigers in the fall, and hoisting sacks of cement for a construction firm in the summer. The Ivy League not to his liking, he found his calling on behalf of a new employer, using those same cement sacks to weigh down stoolies who were to be disposed of in the Jersey swamps. This cost Judy a nickel at Trenton, and he emerged from the Pen seeking honest employment, which he could use as a front while he extorted his way through life.
With a change of address seemingly appropriate, Judy got about as far away from Jersey as possible. He went from the Pine Barrens, to a place where you can't even see a tree. And so, he ambled into the Lubbock offices, all 250 square feet of them, of the Company.
The tall, slim bounty hunter and the short, stocky hit man sized each other up. “Would you mind tellin’ me,” JJ inquired of the young fellow, “the circumstances whereupon yew found yerself in prison?” Judy hesitated, but he needed a job. As he listened, a smile creased JJ’s weathered mug. “Then, yew are an expert,” he drawled, “at makin’ people disappear.” That, Marion Judiszczkiewicz acknowledged, he was.
Santee Reddy puffed nervously on a Virginia Slim. She had barely left the chalet in weeks; the men in sunglasses and dark suits saw to her every need, but they wanted to keep her out of sight. A half-eaten watercress sandwich was sagging on her plate; the tea was untouched. The hell with it, she decided; I’m at least going out for my regular Sunday stroll. The bodyguard sighed, threw up his hands, said, all right, but you stay between us.
Santee shooed him and slapped on a nice blouse and skirt; she’d lost a few pounds cooped up here, a bird in a thoroughly gilded cage. Trim, brown legs extended below the modest hem; she slipped on some good walking shoes. She did her best thinking, her most insightful analysis, when she was striding, long and hard. The plain, ivory-colored bra held in a reasonably rounded bosom; she stood sideways and looked in the mirror, and was met by dark, mysterious eyes that held the petrochemical world’s most cherished secrets. And still not married, sigh. At 42. Oh, well. With what the new people are paying me, I can do without for a little longer.
The bodyguards were alert, they were sharp, but they weren’t government men. They were private sector cops who wouldn’t know a setup if they stumbled over it in their big, round rubber soled shoes. One in front of Ms. Reddy and one in back, they sauntered along like they were guarding a celebrity, glaring menacingly at passersby to scare them off. Judy had had to fend off Federal agents guarding squealers in the Witness Protection Program; these clowns were going to be a snap.
It was dusk; a few shops were still open, but customers were sparse. The colorful stores were perched just a few feet apart on a hilly street, lined with brick; streetlamps had begun to glow, the storefronts shining eerily in their light. Santee marched on, the guards bracketing her, her face set in determination; she had almost figured out that extraction problem…
From in between a couple of buildings in the shopping center, JJ ambled out. It wasn’t hard for him to look like a tourist; he had even draped a camera around his neck. “Hey, there!” he cried, stepping directly in front of the rear bodyguard. “Yew must be one o’ the rich people ‘round here. A rock star, maybe?” The man stopped, glared at JJ; it didn’t work, and the Texan raised his camera. “Say, ‘Money!’” he cried, and the man angrily raised his arm, fist clenched. The front man wheeled around. “Jerry, what’s the problem?” he asked, strolling back to the point of confrontation.
Ms. Reddy kept walking, the occasional tourist or merchant stepping aside for her, the dim lights leading the way. She wasn’t even aware the front guard had left; she was still working on the extraction dilemma when the short, stocky man walked up behind her and raised the silencer, and then, that was the end. She never did figure it out.
Judy was an expert; two quick steps and he had his arm around the dead woman, scolding her for having had too much to drink. He made a sharp left and escorted Ms. Reddy down an alley, where the rented vehicle was waiting, trunk wide open.
By the time the two clowns had fended off JJ and turned back up the street, their charge was nowhere in sight. “Jesus,” breathed Jerry. They pounded up the bricks, quickly ran out of breath, looked both ways. They looked back; JJ was gone, too.
This time, Judy had the honor of escorting the meal-to-be to Poobahland. The big boss’ secretary pronounced “Judiszczkiewicz” as if he’d just gotten off the plane from Lodz, complimented him on his attire--“Those are very pointy shoes,” he remarked--and gave Judy the grand tour. Wow, he thought, gawking up at the immense dome, this reminds me of being at Palmer Stadium. The dames, though, were all wearing those baggy clothes and veil things. Not like the pompom girls, and then he remembered what JJ had told him about the big feast.
Ms. Reddy sure looked funny laying there on the platter, buck naked and shiny like a Thanksgiving turkey. They’d rubbed some sort of sauce on her, kind of gave her a purply look, and served her surrounded with little, chewy fruits. For an old lady, Judy had thought as he packed her in ice for the trip, she had a pretty decent bod, a nice pair of puppies, too.
The ex-scientist was on her back, stretched out, her arms at her sides. Dates filled her eyesockets; a necklace of watercress had been draped across her breastbone. The candied fruit topped her nipples, and a sizeable pear had been plunged into her vagina, post roasting. The sheik's wives giggled and pointed at the last, puffing out their lips to imitate Santee's prominent labia. Then, the Exalted Leader's chef raised his blade, and Ms. Reddy came apart, purple skin split to reveal sizzling, savory meat within. And a plate landed in front of a very uncertain Judy. He graciously accepted it, looked very carefully down at the slab from Ms. Reddy’s belly, and looked around the room to make damn sure everybody else was eating her, too, and it wasn’t some sort of gag.
The sheik was watching Judy intently, so the hit man focused on his portion, cut off a slice, and dug in. S’OK. Beats the stuff they fed him in Trenton; hey, maybe that was--“Mr. Judiszczkiewicz?” said the sheik. Jesus, were all these people from Poland? “Yes, Your Honor,” Judy responded. It was reflex.
“Our dear friend, JJ,” said the boss, in that clipped, British accent. “You must tell him I am immensely pleased with his performance.” He paused, elegantly partook of a bite-size chunk from Ms. Reddy’s right thigh. “Very flavorful,” he opined. “Wouldn’t you say? Perhaps from that lifelong vegetarian diet. Women from the subcontinent have that clean, brisk palate to them. Still--“ he paused, sipping from a crystal chalice, “there is something to be said for European women. After a while, one seeks the robust, the trace piquancy of the flesh that comes from decadent indulgence.”
Judy had no idea what the guy was talking about, but he wasn’t cowed by the presence of a rich oil sheik; after all, he’d once worked for the paisan who’d owned half of Newark. “How about,” he said, “Americans?”
And with that, the sheik’s face changed. His smile widened, revealing even, white teeth; his brows knitted, and his eyes lit up like Broadway. Judy had seen that look before, from the paisan, just before some poor sap was about to be fitted for cement overshoes. “An American?” he purred. “I’ve not had the pleasure. Perhaps you might be good enough, upon your return, to have Mr. JJ call me. We may be able to talk business.”
Judy’s face wrinkled into a tight smile; the woman’s flesh in his belly had left him feeling kind of…sexy. “You got it, Chief,” he said, and the meal continued.
It had turned into a very specialized line of work. The rewards were unearthly, the risks monumental. The Company killed women somebody wanted dead, and delivered them to somebody else who wanted dead women. JJ knew how to find the obscure; Judy took out his quarry the way he used to take out linebackers at Princeton, cleanly, efficiently.
But business started to grow. The sheik, his appetite for “special” banquets growing by leaps and bounds, used his petrodynasty to guide clients to JJ, clients who wanted colleagues, rivals, lovers, to disappear. The better to eat them with, my dear.
It was more business than the two of them could handle; they needed more hired hands. With the help of the sheik, they managed to find them, all over the globe. A jaded hunter from the Transvaal, relishing the opportunity to unleash a lifetime of skills on human prey. An acrobatic ex-circus man from Mongolia, with women in every town; his temper and ferocity were legend, and nobody asked too closely when one of his girlfriends would turn up missing. A computer genius, a mind which could absorb an unlimited number of facts and spit out an answer that was always correct, who viewed each assassination and abduction as a problem in logic, to be solved with a minimum of waste or dramatic effect.
They gradually came to JJ’s employ, and fanned out across the globe; each time, they returned with a figure, wrapped in a bloodstained sheet. The meat was coming in faster than JJ or Judy could truck it to the Poobah--or one of his friends.
The sheik, after all, could not hold his gruesome buffets every day; he had oil riches to collect, and a sheikdom to rule. But many people of means came to visit, and not just because they liked the fancy statues beneath the PoobahDome. They had developed a hankering for the flesh of the harem girls and petty criminals served with pomp and gusto in the ballroom. When they found out JJ delivered, rhetorically speaking, they stuck his phone number up on the icebox.
So with freshly killed women being shipped to shadowy societies in Italy, nationalist sects in Thailand, even--this startled JJ a bit—the alumni association of a certain Big XII university, they needed a handler. Someone who could part the flesh and ready it for the oven, the grill, the barbecue pit behind the Athletic Building in College Station. Judy put the call out to a couple of his old goombahs in Newark. They came up with Shelly.
The kosher butcher was very neat, very fastidious. Some would say pathologically so. He restraightened his apron, checked the edge of his cleaver for the umpteenth time, laid his hands on the table. “OK,” he said. “Let’s see her.”
Judy and Willem hauled her in. Mrs. Sarah Scroggin had been 33. Her husband was 35. His girlfriend was 17. He had collected a sizeable payment from the mining company, after his car ran off faulty tracks and led him headfirst into a coal truck. It had left him so dumb he couldn’t count to ten. Not so dumb, though, that he didn’t know the difference between 17 and 33.
Willem had nailed her, right between the eyes, while she was hanging laundry. The blue hole was drilled neatly through her forehead; her eyes stared vacantly, green and opaque. She was somewhat chunky, fleshy arms from hauling babies, sagging boobs from feeding them. She lay on the table, forlornly, her husband back in West Virginia shacking up with a babe half his age, and waited to be cut into pieces by a wizened little man who was now prodding at her belly, fingering her arms and legs, taking careful aim. “Sure, I can do it,” said Shelly, and he drew the knife deliberately through Mrs. Scroggin’s abdomen.
Judy turned a little green around the gills; Willem remained stoic. He’d dressed enough wild game out in the veldt. Out came Mrs. Scroggin’s liver, stomach, intestines; “She looks pretty clean,” Shelly said cheerfully, splitting her ribcage. Judy ran out of the room, gloved hand over his mouth. Willem snickered and grunted, his eyes intent, as the woman he’d bagged was dissected, piece by piece.
When Shelly was done, he lifted what was left of Mrs. Scroggin and impaled her on a hook that was attached to a scale. “One-one-eight,” he said when the dial stopped spinning. The emptied corpse hung, limply, its mouth slightly open. Willem nodded. "Now," said the little man, cheerfully, "I can prep her and ship her like that, or cut 'er into primal parts, or bone her, or grind her. What's your pleasure?" Willem said this particular customer wanted her cut into smaller pieces, steaks and chops, and the rest ground; Mrs. Scroggin, by failing to object, offered her assent.
It had been a nice little sideline for Sheldon Greenglass. In the Thirties, his dad ran the only glatt slaughterhouse in Hell's Kitchen. When the elder Greenglass was killed in an armed robbery, Shelly took over the business. It was tough sledding, and in desperation the family took on a business partner, one Emilio Rosgiutoni, who was also known as "Baa-Baa," and not for his sheeplike qualities. It was said, when Rosgiutoni responded to a business offer with a "Bah!" the offerer was not long for this world.
One night, as Shelly was locking up, a black sedan showed up at the dock. It was Baa-Baa and a couple other fellas, and they carried between them a tarp. The tarp contained one of those miscreant idea men, riddled with more holes than Swiss cheese, and Baa-Baa had decided his minority stake in the meatpacker provided an excellent opportunity to effect the ill-fated brainstormer's disappearance. The man ended up as part of the day's run of lamb chops, and Shelly went out the next day and bought a copy of Gray's Anatomy.
Although most of the extra meat hauled in after hours by Baa-Baa and his goons was of the male variety, a few of the carcasses were differently equipped. There was a smattering of hookers, and once the tarp contained one Veronica D'Amato, who had been Baa-Baa's mistress until, oh, about an hour ago. Miss D'Amato had quite the pair of bazooms, as Baa-Baa himself pointed out while Shelly was cutting her up; in fact, the diversified businessman elected to take them home with him. Shelly had never asked, but he kind of doubted there was a Mrs. Baa-Baa.
So Shelly knew his way around the female physique, and when Judy's former buddies in the Newark policy racket inquired as to his availability, he quoted a very precise fee and said he'd be delighted. The family business had long since moved out of New York and reestablished itself at a dreary ex-warehouse in the northern Jersey wilderness. It was to that forlorn little building on top of a hill, overlooking tree studded swamps, that Judy and Willem had come with their precious cargo, a West Virginia housewife whose husband's conk on the head had left him wealthy and amoral.
Shelly knew just where to cut. The electric saw shrieked as it bisected Mrs. Scroggin's backbone; the butcher's sure hand traced along her pelvis, and a pale pink hunk of meat emerged, the woman's loin. Turned on its side, the flesh was reduced to slices exactly 1 1/4" thick, girl chops, thought Judy uncomfortably and Willem smugly. "Bone-in, I figure," said the butcher. "Easier to handle that way." Back ribs and thighs, shoulders and arms, all fell away from the carcass to the little man's expert knife, and finally very little of Mrs. Scroggin still hung from the hook. Her mouth still sagged open, though. "Does this have to travel a long way?" Shelly inquired. "You want dry ice if it does. She's highly perishable." Willem snickered at the "perish" joke, and Judy said, yeah, Singapore. "I'll wrap her up," said the smiling little man. "No extra charge."
Shelly wasn’t just a butcher; he was a custom cutter. Just what The Company needed, for JJ’s growing circle of acquaintances all had their little peccadilloes. One, a German auto honcho with a hidden room bedecked in swastikas, wanted a woman who’d been completely boned and pickled. “Vould it be too match,” he smiled, beady little eyes gleaming, “to ask sat she be Jewish?” Not if he was willing to wait, responded JJ, and it wasn’t long before Zach found himself deep in the asphalt jungle, in search of his prey.
Hannah Gottlieb had two big problems. The first was her daddy’s will. Fred Gottlieb, Sr. had bequeathed to her his entire apparel empire, from a chain of warehouses and distribution centers across the US to factories in Hong Kong and Macao. And private label contracts with the mall chains, the sorts of places that get teenagers to pay $49.99 for an ill-stitched rag that screams, “The slob look is in!” The business was worth more than the home country of the poor schmucks who sewed the things together. For a young lady fresh out of Columbia, it was an awesome responsibility.
The second problem was Fred, Jr. Dad had constantly bailed him out of scrapes; he’d burned through every dime he’d gotten in record time, and left nothing behind but wrecked Ferraris and paternity suits. Mom wouldn’t let Fred, Sr. turn his back on the black sheep; Fred, Sr., grudgingly, kept using his money and influence to keep Junior on the street.
But then came the cocaine deal that turned out to have been made with an FBI agent, and the gun Fred, Jr. wasn’t supposed to have on account of his parole, and Junior found himself staring at 20 to life in Ossining. The best lawyer the rag trade could buy got that knocked down to involuntarily man; while Junior was rotting, Mom died, and shortly after he got out, Fred, Sr. followed her to That Big Sweat Shop in the Sky.
The senior Gottlieb had left hard-working, diligent, pay-attention-to-detail Hannah the entire family fortune. He had left Fred, Jr. the stern admonition to go out in the world and make something of himself. And that was exactly what Fred, Jr. had in mind. He was going to make himself the CEO of Gottlieb Enterprises. And The Company was going to get him there.
It was all just a game to Zach. To be honest, until he’d hooked up with The Company, life had been pretty boring. He slept through high school, coasted through college. He’d amused his dorm mates with an intricate video surveillance system, craftily installed in strategic places in the women’s wing, which alerted him to interesting events like a three-way with the varsity quarterback or a group grope in the shower. Selected footage was marketed on the Internet; Zach took the proceeds to the blackjack tables at Vegas, and turned his small fortune into a very large one.
So he was looking for a fresh challenge, one that didn’t require any morals or scruples, when his cousin Ernie, the Paterson bookie, turned him onto The Company. Kill people for money, and bring them the body? Interesting. Let me give it a go, said Zach, and shortly thereafter, Hannah Gottlieb’s mug shots found their way to his e-mail address.
She was kind of pretty, Zach acknowledged, burning into his brain an indelible mental picture of the slim, sophisticated, dark haired girl. Even in the photo, her eyes burned bright; her lips were pulled back, exposing a toothy grin. She looked sharp. But that was OK; Zach relished the thrill of the hunt. Kind of like getting beaver shots of the homecoming queen, he decided. Only it pays better.
It took some searches and a few bucks, but Zach quickly had Hannah’s private cel number, and a tap into the phone company’s memory banks allowed him to eavesdrop on her conversations. With a map of the Manhattan garment district, he meticulously charted Hannah’s daily path, from the modest apartment in Queens to a cab downtown, a tour of the Gottlieb warehouses, a stop at a street stand for a Swiss mocha, then into the barracks-like brain center of Gottlieb Enterprises. Zach pored over that path for the weak point, the monitor glinting off his horn-rimmed glasses as he probed for a way to send Hannah to her eternal reward, and her deboned body to that neo-Nazi.
The trick, he decided, lay within the headquarters building itself. Hannah would greet the guard, then swing right and walk down a dark corridor to the top-floor elevator. Zach dug into the records of the company that built the HQ, found the floor plans; the elevator opened at the top three floors, but the lower two were mostly used for storage. He grinned; now, all he needed was a uniform…
Hannah swung her long legs out of the cab, tipped the driver a five, and began her daily trek through the seedier side of town. Construction workers paused to wolf whistle, and she smiled and waved in response; they grinned.
She was quite a show striding down the street. Nearly six feet, the hem of her streamlined suit barely reaching down to her upper thighs, Hannah had every pair of male eyes (and a few singletons; this was a rough part of town) following her step for step. Her short heels clacked on grubby pavement; Hannah loved to take it all in—the gray skies, dull roar and rat-a-tat busyness of NYC. She still couldn’t believe she was really somebody, now. The Princess of Pajamas. The Sultaness of Sweaters. The Duchess of Denim. Hannah was in charge of cotton; she had the power of polyester. Fred Gottlieb’s little girl reigned over the rag trade.
The big, tough foremen nodded and smiled as she passed, called her Ms. Gottlieb, answered her questions about the day’s loads. The guy in the short sleeves, the one who always had a pen behind his ear, told her how many flaweds and damageds went back onto the truck, how many would be diverted to the private label. She nodded, a serious frown on her face, digested it all, and continued on, and the middle-aged men sneaked a peek at Hannah’s bouncing bottom and sheer-hosed limbs, and sighed, as middle-aged men will do when they dream of their own youths.
They got an extra glimpse when Hannah stopped for the mocha and stooped at the waist to fish out a couple bucks; the suit’s skirt hiked up very nicely and showed more leg than the Rockettes down the street. Then it was clickety-clack up the concrete steps, past the beaming guard, and around the corner. Sipping the scalding drink, Hannah rushed to the private elevator and clambered aboard. She was still mulling shipment totals and poring over yellow sheets when the car stopped. She didn’t realize it was the seventh floor, not the ninth, until she looked up and saw the man dressed all in black, and the drawn bow, and the arrow pointed right at her.
The cup and the papers went flying; Hannah staggered back, the shaft protruding from her chest. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a hoarse croak came out as she tried to breathe. Grabbing wildly behind her, she hung from the elevator’s railing, looking up one last time to see the black figure string a second arrow, and then she felt it pass through her again. And then, no more.
Whistling, Zach peeled off the black stretch clothes, to reveal a Gottlieb Enterprises blue-and-white overall. He scooped up the blood soaked garment heiress under the knees and arms, lifted her straight up, and carried her to a large, upright box. It was marked, BRASSIERES, PRODUCT OF CHINA—THIS END UP. In she went, and a couple dozen titslings on top of her, before he sealed up the box again.
Still humming a happy tune, Zach slid a handtruck under his cargo and entered the elevator, getting off at 2, the loading dock level. “Out of town,” he told the guy in charge of Shipping, handing him some very precisely forged documents. “Northern New Jersey.” “Have a good time,” the real Gottlieb employee cracked, directing him to a small delivery truck, and Zach loaded in the last thing between Fred Gottlieb, Jr. and his dad’s fortune, got in the cab, and headed for the Pine Barrens.
“Very soft,” Shelly commented. The filleting knife easily worked through Hannah’s leg, took out cartilage as if the blade had eyes, and the butcher grunted as he extracted an entire femur from the opening. “I imagine she’d been pampered a bit. Still, I think our client will be satisfied.”
“What’s he going to do with her?” asked Zach. He was thumbing through the now dog-eared copy of Gray’s Anatomy, paused on a page which displayed a blown out diagram of a dissected woman, and looked at the tits.
The curved cut on the back of the dead heiress’ pale, smooth leg yielded a fibula. “As best I can tell,” said Shelly, “he’s going to keep her for snacks. He works a lot of long, hard hours, you know.”
Zach laughed, nervously. “Snacks? Just raw, like that?” He looked back down at Gray’s. He had no idea Fallopian tubes were so long.
“Of course not.” Shelly cut a long, narrow slit, and popped out the tibia, neat as you please. “I’m going to pickle her. After all, she’s kosher.”
So women whom somebody wanted to disappear, disappeared, and the company prospered. A hooker who knew too much about a politician’s double-dealing wound up, seared and steaming, as she turned over a Brazilian cattleman’s asado. One of the two finalists for a breakout Hollywood role ended her glamorous career as dismembered joints and quarters in an aging rock star’s freezer. And then came Lisa.
Judy was still JJ’s point man, the one The Company turned to in the tough cases. He still had an athlete’s agility, a con man’s cunning. And a mobster’s connections; it took a while, an agonizingly long wait for Larry. But finally, the call came. “Hong Kong?” cried the balding, bespectacled businessman, exasperated. “Oh, that’s great. How are you…? I mean, all those…?”
“Doan worry,” came the Texas drawl on the other end. “Yew just ante up the deposit, an’ wait for the next call.” Click. Larry hunkered down and waited, dreaming of stockholders holding him over a bottomless pit…dangling him by his ankles…
It was going to be tricky, Judy knew. His target would blend in with a million other faces; he wasn’t going to get her alone in a quiet moment. Unless…and he remembered a movie scene, from his youth. A thin smile played on the stretched, rubber lips. It takes two, he decided, after all, to swindle.
Lisa had it all figured out. The options were good through the 31st; she would exercise them at the last possible moment, then hit the skies and be halfway around the world while AmalSmurf was choking on its own dioxin. The money went into a numbered Swiss account; she had a new identity waiting for her in the south of Spain. This was, she had to concede, her biggest scheme of all; the toy company and the liquor company had been candy next to this. This was steak; she was bleeding dry the biggest paper maker in the world. Leaving them as thin as a sheet of loose leaf. Life was good.
She was a little concerned about the broker, though. Didn’t want her in his office; AmalSmurf, the man with the Jersey accent had said, has people looking for her everywhere. They’d do it all wirelessly, from a taxicab, in the middle of the city; dot the I’s at a stop light, transfer the funds, and it would be off to the airport and La Dolce Vita. That suited Lisa fine, and she hailed the orange and yellow checked cab at 4:15, right on schedule.
The streets were wall to wall people, tourists hurrying to throw their money away, businessmen frantically chasing dreams or a heart attack. As usual, traffic on the ten-lane main drag was just inching along. The broker grinned when Lisa got in. “Pleased to meetcha,” he said, and she snapped, “Just get going. I want this done fast, got it?”
You got it, sister, thought Judy. “Where to, sir?” said the cabbie, innocently, muscles bulging against the short sleeves of his shirt. “Just take us around the city,” Judy told Chang, his confederate, and the ex circus-man played his part to the hilt. “Veddy nice weather, sir,” he called out against the loud rock ‘n’ roll blaring from his radio; “Yeah, yeah,” said Judy, producing the usual set of very real-looking documents. “I think these are in order,” and Lisa put on some reading glasses, peered at them, frowning.
She sure was a big gal, Judy thought. Her thighs filled out the tan slacks; a very full bosom strained at the pullover. He wondered where she was headed; wherever it was, they were getting the giant, economy size. “You play sports?” he asked, casually. Field hockey, she informed him. Second team All-America. Judy was in awe; damn, there’d be a lot of meat on her. “Football,” he told her. “Say—oh, my God!”
His eyes had widened with horror; he pointed across Lisa, to her left. As she turned, Chang braked, hard; Lisa was thrown against the front seat, and then, suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.
Judy tightened the garrote, bit by bit. Lisa was fighting, kicking, swinging those fleshy arms back and forth; she sagged to the floor. The slipknot would just keep getting tighter, Judy knew, from experience; his fist clenched the silken rope, gradually winding it up, and Lisa turned pink, then purple. Her tongue popped out of her mouth, and she puffed like someone who’d just run up a hill, a steep one. Her eyes shifted, and peered right into Judy’s; they were turning red with broken blood vessels, even as her face was turning blue, her breath no longer coming. Judy resisted the urge to say, “Larry says, ‘Hello’,” because they only did that in the movies. And then Lisa crumpled, and lay still, and Judy finally exhaled.
The AmalSmurf private jet was waiting at the airport. Judy had the dead woman undressed by the time they arrived; the wooden crate packed with dry ice was ready. As the hit man flew off with his cargo, heading back to the Pine Barrens, he reflected. She was worth millions, he thought, his hand patting the wooden box, the nude corporate fixer inside. Now, she’s just merchandise. Just like that goddamn company’s asswipe.
Well, thought Chang, this was different. The ersatz cabbie had been selected to represent The Company as the meat and fee were exchanged. It wasn’t the first time—he’d been to the PoobahDome, and to a place up in the Canadian wilderness run by a bunch of half-crazy militiamen who still thought the Russians were going to cross the Bering Sea any second. But this was definitely…different.
It was probably a swanky resort at some point in the past; now, the once-magnificent Southern estate had something of a seedy feel to it. Paint was peeling; gates were rusty. The man at the gate was an elderly domestic, dressed in a getup that looked like a cross between the Confederate Army and a doorman at the Ritz. Chang’s Eurasian features made the gatekeeper suspicious; the ex-circus man smiled, patiently. “Your employers are expecting me,” he told the peevish old coot, and indeed, they were; he was waved on through.
“Welcome, Mr. Chang!” beamed the lady of the establishment; she was white-haired, elegant, regally thin, and offered a hand. Chang, who had met sophisticated ladies from Biloxi to Ulan Bator—and had killed some of them—lifted her hand to his lips. She tittered as he puckered. “Oh, my, so gallant! Please, come with me.” Chang followed; behind him, black men in white garb were unloading Shelley’s waxed cardboard box and hurriedly hauling The Woman Who Had It All to the kitchen.
WELCOME SONS, read the placard in front of the manse’s once opulent doorway. PRIVATE PARTY; DINER IS CLOSED TODAY. Off to the side, what probably would have been the main greeting room 150 years ago was arranged with neat, glass-topped tables, each with four place settings, fine china and a floral centerpiece. “The restaurant, to be honest,” the lady was telling him, “has not performed as well as in years past; a lot of new faces in town, not many willing to indulge in an authentic, antebellum dining experience.”
She strode, he followed, down a broad hallway lined with family portraits; men in 19th century suits, depicted with scowls and glaring eyes. “And so,” she went on, her heels clacking off the slate floor, “we offer these special events to exclusive club members; many have long-standing family fortunes, earned in the textile and shipping industries. One of our members—” she smiled, puckishly—“had employed your Mr. JJ in pursuit of a missing cocktail waitress who, perhaps, knew more of the family history than was comfortable. When it was discovered he offered this additional service, we decided it was just the thing to spice up attendance at the club’s regular functions.”
The boss lady’s office manager was a rotund, little man in a tuxedo, wisps of gray hair forming a semi circle around his otherwise naked scalp. His face was tomato red; he wouldn’t even look at Chang. “Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two,” he muttered, counting out stacks of hundred dollar bills; it beats those crazy Canadians, thought Chang, who had paid in gold bullion. He thrust out the cash; Chang casually stuffed it into his inside jacket pocket. “Come,” smiled the boss lady. “I will show you to your room; you will be our guest for the evening’s banquet.”
Like everything else in the rickety, old mansion, the guestroom used to be pretty impressive. High ceiling, chandelier, elaborately carved headboard…but the carpet was worn thin in places, and the wallpaper had gaping holes in it. Chang crashed; he had it in him to awaken precisely on schedule, and fully alert. If he hadn’t had that gift, he’d probably be in a hole somewhere, himself.
The last one had forced him to flee the traveling show. In the heat of the American desert, he had met a lovely girl. Skin like cocoa, almond eyes that drew you in, a luscious, womanly body that belied her eighteen years; Chang would visit at the end of the long, exhaustive night, an evening filled with dramatic mid-air somersaults and spectacular flying leaps that elicited gasps from the crowd. For him, so routine, and he could not wait to see his Felicia.
For five nights, it had been like that, the greeting with hands and mouth and tongue on the back balcony, the surreptitious entry through a window into her room, the hours of mad passion. Felicia had marveled at his body, sculpted by the endless pulls and vaults from fifty feet above the ground, his muscles like taut cords. He, in turn, feasted upon hers, exploring every inch of her supple flesh, the flavor of cream spiked with ginger. Every moment was rapturous, and his climax was filled with the exhilaration of a hundred-foot fall, onto an endless bed of roses.
But the circus had been held over unexpectedly, and when he arrived at the balcony on the sixth night, Chang was startled to see two silhouettes framed by her window, to hear giggling and a laugh. Another man would have left in defeat, but Chang was not another man. The jealousy welled in him like a rising gorge, taking command of his brain, causing the magnificent athlete to leap onto the balcony and crash through the window. The screams and shouts barely registered on him, and when he awoke four hours later in an alley behind some tenements, his clothes dripped blood.
By the time he got back, the show was gone. And then he heard the reports…the daughter of a prominent local politician…police suspected a drifter. They had a composite sketch; it did not look like Chang, but it did look Asian. So he ran, ran away from the circus, as it were, and deeper into the desert, and then into the High Plains…where he met a man whose checkered past had included a run in with a bounty hunter…a bounty hunter, the man had heard, who was looking for a skilled assistant…
Chang rose precisely at 7:30; the clock in his head had never let him down. He stared at himself in the slightly cracked mirror, slicked his jet black hair back, splashed a little cologne on his face. The athletic T-shirt impressively displayed those sinewy arms and shoulders, but he sighed; he feared he was losing his edge, the physicality that made him the daring, well, still somewhat young man on the flying trapeze. Piloting a taxicab while Judy strangled a fat, self-important corporate embezzler; yeah, his muscle tone was slipping away on a daily basis.
Another older man in one of those Jeff Davis wannabe zoot suits was about to knock when Chang swung the door open. “Good evening, sir!” he drawled. “Mrs. Devro sends her regards. Will you please follow me to the dining room?”
The guy walked so slow, Chang could have done handsprings back and forth over him, and was tempted to. But they finally made it down to the dining room before Christmas, and the room was humming with the chitchat of older men and a few women, their cocktail glasses elevated at identical 90 degree angles. Conversation paused a little when they entered; the room was dimly lit, candles and just orange glows at the tips of the electric chandelier, but they could see Chang wasn’t from these parts. “Presenting,” the old guy said, “an honored guest of Mrs. Devro, Mr. Chang,” and everybody relaxed and started chatting and boozing again.
Chang found himself seated with a warmly pleasant couple in their seventies and a younger man who seemed a bit stiff. “Your first ‘Sons’ event, Mr. Chang?” the older man inquired; yes, he said, without going into detail. “It’s a great honor,” he said, trying to sound like those old style guys from Chinatown, and the couple laughed, merrily. “Even without the ‘main course’,” said the woman, “it’s worth it, just to meet our old friends and continue to help the Sons.”
“It’s the patriotic,” the younger man said, looking at Chang, “thing to do.” Chang nodded and smiled, and thought, are these people planning to secede again? Fortunately, somebody tapped a water glass, and the hubbub ceased; Mrs. Devro, dressed up like she was about to host a society ball, rose to speak.
She just wanted to thank everybody for continuing to support the society, so that their heritage could live on. Attendance had grown at the monthly events, and they were certainly keeping the kitchen staff bustling—the black men in their starched white suits stood silently by the rear entry, and the Sons gave them a polite round of applause.
Mrs. Devro put on a pair of flamboyantly-rimmed glasses, looked down, and read off a little slip of paper, and Chang heard Lisa’s whole life history again, the undergrad at Smith and the MBA, the corporate trail of havoc she’d wreaked. The magnificent woman’s eyes twinkled, and she looked up over her glasses. “And now,” she said, mischievously, “our little flower of the North,” and the room roared with derisive laughter, as the unsmiling kitchen help wheeled Lisa in.
The doomed woman’s chalky, pale skin had turned a shiny orange-yellow; it shone in the flickering lights of the room. She was on a large platter, on her tummy, on a bed of greens; an apple had been shoved into her mouth, a carrot up her tush. Her already fleshy body seemed to have swollen further, straining against the hard, smooth skin; there was a fragrance Chang couldn’t describe. So that, he thought, wondrously, looking at the roasted woman on the platter, is what we do.
Old Man leaned over and spoke to Chang, conspiratorially. “This is more symbolic than anything else, you know,” he said. “As long as they continue to suck the resources out of our land, all we can do is fight the good fight. But, in any event, she won’t be making any more Yankee babies.” And with that, dishes of Lisa’s meat slid before them; Chang stared down at what he guessed would be a rib chop. One of the servants stood behind him, poised with a ladle and gravy boat. “Some sauce, sir?” he asked Chang, and The Company’s man nodded. The applause and laughter at Lisa’s expense had died away, replaced by the murmur of dignified people savoring their eats. Chang cut a sliver of the downfallen businesswoman’s flesh, ate it, reflectively. This is, he repeated to himself, certainly…different.
Almost all of The Company’s people had consumed the forbidden flesh at one time or another. “Business is business,” JJ would declare, and Zach and Willem and Chang and Judy, reluctantly, had all nodded. They never really developed a taste for it; that was for the survivalists and neo-Nazis and the Poobah’s high-living, decadent friends.
Shelly hadn’t tried it. “Delicate stomach,” the old butcher would smile, when invited to join in one of their exchanges. He still had a business to run; truth be told, he didn't need to—The Company paid well. But that Lower East Side work ethic had stayed with him, and he still cut lamb and veal and beef when he wasn’t custom butchering some B-movie star for a drug-addled studio magnate.
Ellie hadn’t tried it, either. She didn’t know anything about it. All she knew was, The Company handled an awful lot of money, most of it cash. She knew, because it was her job to count every dime of it, deposit it, and make sure it got sent out to New Jersey.
She had just been looking for a job, fresh out of Trans-Pecos Community College, and the ad in the paper promised steady work, an OK wage, and health benefits. JJ had seemed awfully cautious when he interviewed her. Had she ever handled large sums of money? Well, she used to be a supermarket cashier; they took in tens of thousands of dollars a day. He also wondered if she had any experience with international shipping. She frowned; she had sent gifts back home to her mum in England; did that count? JJ sighed, shrugged, and said she had herself a job.
Ellie didn’t explain, because she wasn’t asked, that she lost her supermarket job because the receipts never seemed to add up, and the gifts she sent back home to her mum included a few hundred dollars from the day’s take at the store. She couldn’t help it; she just liked to take things. She’d moved from England to Texas to live with an uncle who was a preacher, but all of his stuff kept disappearing, too. Finally, even he had reached the limits of human kindness and mercy, and Ellie was out on her rather round derriere.
She didn’t really come to The Company looking to rip them off. For one thing, she found it hard to believe they had anything to steal, to begin with; JJ had upgraded, but his office now was 500 square feet instead of 250. It was still barely big enough for the two of them, although JJ was rarely there; Ellie found herself buying a lot of plane tickets for JJ, and for some short, burly guy with a dose, dem and dese accent whose name she couldn’t come close to pronouncing, let alone spelling. “Just call me Judy,” he had told her, and she started laughing. He didn’t look like a Judy.
Neither one of them, in fact, looked like they had any money at all, and Ellie was therefore very surprised when the loot started arriving. There were some checks, but JJ or Judy were just as likely to walk in with $20,000 in small bills in a U.S. Mail sack, and have her count it. They were pretty careless about it, but somehow, Ellie was cowed at the thought of pilfering any of it. She wondered whether they were doing something illegal; JJ had told her they dealt in very rare merchandise, and were paid both for recovering it and delivering it to the buyer.
But she had started to wonder if they really would miss a hundred bucks, here and there. She started thinking—you know, I could just walk home with one of these mail bags, and leave town. They’d never find me. Then she thought, wait a minute, it’s their job to find things that are hard to find. Sure, they’ll find me. She kept wrestling with those two impulses, and then a week later, the ultimate temptation arrived.
Amalgamated Smurfit had been very happy with The Company’s work. Seven digits happy. Larry figured the unexecuted options had saved him, personally, $75 million, and he was eager to show his gratitude. JJ even seemed a little awed as he dropped the mail bag onto Ellie’s desk, then stood by silently as she counted it. It took close to an hour, and finally, she looked up.
“One million dollars,” she said, startled at the way it sounded, rolled off her tongue. JJ nodded. “Put it in the bank, please,” he said, and was on his way to Ecuador, on business.
Ellie stared at the money piled up on her desk for a good, long time. The bills were not in sequence; some were new, some worn. There were hundreds, fifties, twenties, even some tens and fives. Somebody had just given JJ a million bucks, like he was tipping a cabbie. She thought, and thought, and finally, she stopped thinking about it. She locked up, the money secured in the bag she carried her lunch and a spare pair of shoes in. And she wasn’t going to the bank.
Ellie ran, far. She really didn’t have a plan; she never did. But she knew she couldn’t go to her uncle’s. And she couldn’t smuggle that kind of money onto an airplane. So she just kept on driving.
She kind of half expected to get caught, quickly. When cops walked into the convenience store, she was ready to put her wrists out for the cuffs. She’d buy the paper from back home, looking for the headline, FUGITIVE WITH COOL MILLION SOUGHT. Not even a mention.
She did have a thought or two about retracing her steps, returning the money. What would JJ do to her? He had seemed like a nice enough man, but a no-nonsense kind of guy. Maybe he wouldn’t turn her in…but the power the million dollars had over her was overwhelming. Once she had it, she wasn’t going to give it up.
She kept heading north, up through Oklahoma and into Kansas. Then she got a brainstorm; there had been that friend from the college, the one who got a job in Colorado as a systems analyst. Maybe she could hang out there for a while, send Mum the money in chunks, then head home. She stopped in Salina, found a pay phone, and gave him a call.
He seemed nervous. Things were OK, he said; the job had worked out really well. He had a place up in the mountains, they got out and skied, nearly every week. Sure, come on up and visit if you’re going to be in the area. We’ll be looking for you.
He hung up. So did Zach. “Should be a piece of cake,” he told JJ. He nodded, picked up the phone, and speed dialed Willem.
Ellie couldn’t figure it out. Allen was always such a fun loving guy, and now he had this great job and this cabin up on the top of the world. So why was he acting like a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs? He kept dropping things, and stuttering; when the phone rang, he almost jumped out of his skin.
His wife had made up the guestroom; “Feel free to come and go,” she had told Ellie. “We had made plans to meet another couple for skiing tomorrow.” There was food in the fridge; here’s the celphone number. They got out there, rather quickly, Ellie thought, Allen acting like he had to catch a train. Their SUV roared through a light snowstorm down the mountain, the lights disappearing in the swirling flakes, and Ellie was alone again.
She sighed as she fed the fire, sparks exploding from the grate as she dropped a heavy log squarely onto the dimming embers. She made herself a snack, then another snack. She felt like a prisoner; the snow was getting heavier, the moon now just a shimmering glob, as the shifting flurries masked and unmasked it again. The howl of the wind was incessant but uneven, the pitch and intensity rising and then dying again; Ellie listened to nature’s music, the wind and the crackling of the fire, and had no desire to sleep.
Allen’s wife had told Ellie about the extra wood in the shed; she didn’t want to lose the fire, it was keeping her mind occupied. She bundled back up and charged into the storm; the shed was only a few dozen feet from the cabin, but it felt like she was fighting her way to the Pole. A few more feet, the metal door hanging there, inviting, beckoning…come here, get my woooood, it said…
In order, Ellie heard, saw and felt. The loud report was startling, in the midst of the cries of the wind. It stayed her mittened hand, just for a moment, and then she tried to reach for the shed’s door. She could not; puzzled, she looked down, and saw the dark stain on the sleeve of her coat. It was only then that she felt, not so much pain, as weakness.
Ellie turned, the shed and its wood forgotten. She was trying to go back to the cabin, trying very hard, but it seemed as though she was wading through molasses; it was tortuously slow going, and the fatigue was getting stronger. She really just wanted to lay down here, here in the middle of the blizzard, and take a nap; it would be very restful here, and she was so sleepy…
The second loud crack sent her sprawling. She might have tried to get up, but the ground felt very comfortable. Ellie simply huddled up, and faded away, and 500 yards away, Willem shook his head.
“Two shots,” he said to himself. “Not good. Getting soft.”
Shelly was a little sad. “She seemed like a nice girl,” he said. “We talked on the phone all the time, whenever there was an order. The accent was very cute.”
Ellie was naked, hanging from one of the hooks in the little shop up in the Pine Barrens. Her eyes were closed, her mouth set; she really did look like she was taking a nap. But her open abdomen, the viscera cleaned out, the wall of red meat and white bone lining her back, showed she had taken the sleep of Hamlet. There was one hole in her back from Willem’s second shot; another, in her shoulder, from the first.
“This is a first,” said Judy. “Our own hit. We don’t get paid. We got the million back, though.”
“And Willem gets paid out of it, too,” Shelly sighed. “Oh, well. Where’s she headed?”
Judy finally grinned. “The Poobah,” he said. “Special appreciation dinner; he’s our best customer. We’re all invited. Coming? You can shut the shop down for a week.”
Shelly ran a hand up Ellie’s flank. She was firm, toned; her flesh gave, but sparingly. Her breasts were round and happy looking; her legs, muscled and sleek. She would yield a good deal of meat.
“Maybe,” he said. “Just this once.”