demanded through the peephole.
“I’m your driver. Mr. Rinehard hired me to take you to the party.”
“Party?”
“It’s at a club downtown. You coming?”
The man looked like a typical limo driver. Simon watched him try to scratch his back as he answered Simon’s questions.
“Mr. Rinehard gave me instructions to not take no for an answer. He told me you’re a homebody is why. His words.”
Simon almost asked the driver if he was alone, then saw his fear for a moment as unreasonable paranoia. Rinehard trying to kill him? trying to send a doughy limo driver to get him in his car and take him somewhere? Rinehard having him beaten up at a movie premiere? Calling Casper from pay phones?
“Give me a minute,” he stated through the door. He quaffed his whiskey and dabbed at some broken skin on his back with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol then put on a jacket and walked out to meet the driver. He locked the dead bolt behind him.
It was a Hummer. Simon climbed in embarrassed.
“Know anything about this party?” he asked the driver once they were on their way.
“Mr. Rinehard said something about a party for some employees. He’s your boss, I take it?”
“That’s right.”
He started to relax. The whiskey was working on him, as was the traffic-free, quiet street rolling steadily by. His phone vibrated with a text.
“Guys outside my apartment. Feeling a bit panicked.”
Fear rushed back into Simon’s head. “Let me out here.” He remembered that he hadn’t given Casper a payphone number to call as he had promised.
“It’s on this block,” the driver replied. “You sure?”
“Uh, yeah. Right here.”
Casper jumped out and looked for a pay phone.
“You okay?” came another text.
He was afraid to text back. He started looking for a cab when he saw Rinehard climb out of a limousine down the block in front of the club’s entrance. By luck, Rinehard spotted him immediately, leaving Simon no opportunity to hide and leave. Rinehard motioned him over. Simon gestured to give him a minute as he texted Casper. “I’m at a party with Rinehard.”
“Glad you could make it,” Rinehard grinned at Simon as he walked up to him, putting a heavy paw on Simon’s shoulder.
“Of course.”
“God, what happened to your face.”
“I got beat up at the premiere,” he said, afraid to look him in the eye. Afraid to find out for certain if Rinehard was involved.
“Well, shit. Did they get the guys?”
“Um, not yet,” Simon said, letting on as if he had reported it.
“Let me buy you a drink. Actually, have all you want. Just say you’re with the Sun. I’m picking up the tab.”
“Thanks, Mr. Rinehard.”
“One of the perks of being management.”
“Of course.”
“Plus, it means I trust you more.” Rinehard put his bloated face in Simon’s view.
“Yes.”
They walked past the hangers-on at the velvet rope into the musky club, the kinetic lighting temporarily blinding Simon. “Give him what he wants,” Rinehard barked at the bartender as he walked off to a VIP lounge.
“Get out of there,” the text came back from Casper. “I’m real nervous right now.”
“Relax,” he texted back. “How do you know they’re there for you?”
“I look out the window and they’re staring straight at me. It’s like they’re waiting for something.”
Simon got a drink and, with nothing better to do, decided to try the VIP lounge. It was hidden from the view of the riffraff with a thick curtain. A topless girl was rubbing Rinehard’s back while he did cocaine off the drink table.
“Sit down. Do a line. It will make you feel better,” he commanded.
Simon tried, but his hand fumbled the rolled up dollar.
Rinehard cackled. “Loosen up! You act like I work you too hard.” He raised his drink to his face and winked hatefully at Simon over the rim. The light in the club was pulsing red to a mercilessly throbbing beat.
“Simon they got me. In a trunk. I’m going to call the cops, but when they hear it I’m through.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap??” he texted, hands shaking. He looked at the goons now standing in front of the curtain. He tried to occupy his mind while waiting for a response, knowing that if Casper really had been taken there would be none.
“Is your name Anique?”
“Yeah.”
“You look white as a ghost,” Rinehard observed to Simon quietly half an hour later. Simon’s hand was sweaty, clutching his phone. There had been no text back. “Go home and get some rest.”
The same driver took him home. On the drive Simon remembered how brash he used to be, how defiant. He wondered how Casper was facing the thugs that had taken him. He wondered if he had finally used his family name for his benefit. He wondered if he had tried to threaten them that when he called the cops, they would know there was foul play involved in his death.
Simon wondered if the person he used to be would have protested, to the universe or himself or whomever, the unfairness of it, the fact that he didn’t even get to say goodbye, to say what was in his heart. He wondered if Casper had gotten his last text, if he would have been hurt by Simon’s doubt. If he should have fought for something, to send one last message saying goodbye, knowing that it wouldn’t be received. If those things matter. He was cowering at shadows.
He said nothing to the driver. He walked upstairs to his apartment, still so deep in his thoughts that he didn’t notice that the deadbolt was unlocked.
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