Fully Loaded Thrillers - Crouch Blake. Страница 38

When you were a child, I didn’t tell you about the evil in the world, all that lay in wait. In the same way, let’s forget all that’s happened in the past, and let me just be your Papa for the four and a half hours you have left to live. When they strap you down, please say your piece to the families of the victims, but then find my eyes, seek out my face, and if you hold any shred of love for me, take comfort in my presence.

The night of your birth while your mother slept I walked you up and down the hospital corridor, your tiny heart racing against my chest. I sang into your ear, told you that no matter what happened, I would be your Papa.

Always.

And I stand by that still.

The young man behind the Plexiglas turns over the last page of the letter and stares into the scuffs in the table. Through the walls, you can hear metal doors closing, bolts sliding home, the distant voices of the guards. He doesn’t look anything like a monster. Rather, an IT guy. Wire-rim glasses. Scrawny and slight. Five-seven in shoes with generous heels. Five-six in the prison-issue flip-flops. He’s had a recent shave.

The old man startles when he reaches up to unshelve the phone again.

For a long time, they both just breathe into the receivers, and when he speaks, his voice is soft and southern and contains a raspy, blown-out quality, as if he spent the last four years screaming.

“That’s all you got to say to me?”

As his father nods, he can see the long, blanched line of scarring across the old man’s throat, and he feels a flicker—not remorse, not regret, just some unidentified emotional response, alien because it’s rare.

“I heard they had to cut out your voicebox.”

A nod.

“And you won’t use one of them speech enhancement devices?”

Shake.

“Hell, I wouldn’t either. I don’t want to speak for you, but I would think not having to talk to assholes has a bright side.”

His old man breaks the slightest smile.

“So you aren’t going to ask me? That’s not why you came?”

A look of recognition passes across his father’s hazel eyes like the shadow of a cloud, and the old man shakes his head.

“You just came for me. To be here for me.”

The young man is quiet for a long while. He gathers up the pages of the letter and reads them again. When he finishes, he stares at his father, feels the tremor he’s been fighting for the last two days sneaking back, and he has to sit on his right hand to stop it.

“I want to do something for you now. It ain’t much but it’s all I got to give. You remember the big Magnolia tree I used to climb in the cemetery? That’s where Mom is. Underneath it.”

A sheet of tears begins to shimmer across the surface of his father’s eyes.

“I can’t tell you why I did what I did to her. To you. So if you came to hear where I put her, now you heard, and now you can leave and quit pretending and I won’t hold it against you.”

His father lowers the phone and leans in toward the scratched-up Plexi.

Mouths, I’m not going anywhere.

An introduction to “The Pain of Others”

This one closes out the collection, because it’s probably my favorite story I’ve written to date. I’d tried half a dozen times to execute what I thought was a cool idea...what if in the course of your daily life, you accidentally intercepted a hit, a contract killing—maybe you discovered that a hitman was going to knock someone off, or you were mistakenly tasked with carrying out the hit.

I kept trying to attack this idea and kept striking out. I couldn’t get any traction, and I was starting to become really frustrated.

This was the problem (I realized in hindsight): in all my failed attempts to write this story, my everyman, the person who accidentally gets themselves involved, was a good person. Which meant that logic dictated they would simply go straight to the police, identify the bad guy, save the good guy, story over. And that’s no fun.

The breakthrough for me on this story was when I realized that my hero couldn’t go to the police. That I would have to make that impossible. So I decided to make them a thief, on probation, and to have them in the midst of committing a crime when they discover the hitman and his intentions.

Sometimes you get lucky and characters come fully-formed and ready to talk to you.

Letty Dobesh, the anti-hero of “The Pain of Others” did not disappoint. She truly wrote herself, and I had so much fun with her, I’m sure she’ll show up in something else in the not too distant.

In the meantime, this is Letty’s story. She’s a thief, yes, but she has a conscience. I love her because she made this story happen for me. I hope you’ll love her too.

the pain of others

The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity…Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Letty Dobesh, five weeks out of Fluvanna Correctional Institute on a nine-month bit for felony theft, straightened the red wig over her short brown hair, adjusted the oversize Jimmy Choo sunglasses she’d lifted out of a locker two days ago at the Asheville Racquet and Fitness Club, and handed a twenty-spot to the cabbie.

“Want change, Miss?” he asked.

“On a $9.75 fare? What does your heart tell you?”

Past the bellhop and into the Grove Park Inn carrying a small leather duffle bag, the cloudy autumn day just cool enough to warrant the fires at either end of the lobby, the fourteen-foot stone hearths sending forth drafts of intersecting warmth.

She sat down at a table on the outskirts of the lounge, noting the prickle in the tips of her ears that always started up right before. Adrenaline and fear and a shot of hope because you never knew what you might find. Better than sex on tweak.

The barkeep walked over and she ordered a San Pellegrino with lime. Checked her watch as he went back to the bar: 2:58 p.m. An older couple cuddled on a sofa by the closest fireplace with glasses of wine. A man in a navy blazer read a newspaper several tables away. Looked to her like money—top-shelf hair and skin. Must have owned a tanning bed or just returned from the Islands. Two Mexicans washed windows that overlooked the terrace. All in all, quiet for a Saturday afternoon, and she felt reasonably anonymous, though it didn’t really matter. What would be recalled when the police showed up? An attractive thirty-something with curly red hair and ridiculous sunglasses.

As her watch beeped three o’clock, she picked out the sound of approaching footsteps—the barkeep returning with her Pellegrino. He set the sweating glass on the table and pulled a napkin out of his vest pocket.

She glanced up. Smiled. Good-looking kid. Compulsive weightlifter.

“What do I owe you?”

“On the house,” he said.

She crushed the lime into the mineral water. Through the windows she could see the view from the terrace—bright trees under grey sky, downtown Asheville in the near distance, the crest of the Blue Ridge in the far, summits headless under the cloud deck. She sipped her drink and stared at the napkin the barkeep had left on the table. Four four-digit, handwritten numbers. Took her thirty seconds to memorize them, and a quick look around confirmed what she had hoped—the windowwashers and the hotel guests remained locked and absorbed in their own worlds. She lifted the napkin and slid the keycard underneath it across the glass tabletop and into her grasp. Then shredded the napkin, sprinkling the pieces into the hissing water.