I reached out my left hand to distract her while bringing the right up, leading with the chloroform-soaked rag. It couldn’t have been cleaner; we were on the edge of shadow, just inside the verge of tree line. By the time alarm darkened her features the rag was against her nose and I had my left arm coming across to embrace her. For all practical purposes we were no more than two friends meeting after class in the parking lot.
And chloroform works fast, just like in the movies. I pulled up close to her as her legs gave way and braced her with my body as I steered both of us back toward the rental. I’d left the passenger side door ajar so I could kick it open with my foot, and less than thirty seconds later I had her in the seat, already thrown back for the occasion. After that I was just another college student rummaging around in my car for some misplaced something. I wasn’t even breathing hard when I came around and got in on the driver’s side.
I didn’t bother looking around as I backed out. The car was rented under a false name and would be back at the lot awaiting another customer before dark. Biting back the urge for a cigarette, I dropped the car from Reverse into Drive and headed for one of Sautin’s many warehouse properties. Of course, I’d let him in on none of this. Up until our meeting later on this morning, he’s had no reason to mistrust me. Blood on the hands does a lot in the way of soothing suspicious nerves.
I hit her with another dose on the way to the warehouse and carried her in through the back loading door while she was still in La-La Land. Then I took her into a small office with a steel door and no windows: a good place to scream all you want to no effect.
I used electrical tape to strap her to the barber’s chair, and only with this initial phase of my plan complete did I take a smoke break. I was on my fourth cigarette when she began coming around. I hadn’t taped her mouth because like I said, the place was perfect for screams. Completely soundproof.
I put on a smile to greet her as she came around to full consciousness.
Surprisingly enough she remained quiet. Many bigger, tougher men had been nowhere near so composed. I made the second greeting simple enough.
“Hello,” I said, stubbing out the cigarette on the concrete floor.
She just looked at me and for the first time her face registered hate. I tried not to notice, and (bending at the waist with my elbows on my knees) began telling her what it was I had to say. She took the whole thing in silence, and when I finished I stood up and left the room, closing the door tightly behind me. I knew she needed time to digest the scenario I’d laid out.
Plus, I had a phone call to make.
I walked out to the rear parking lot and studied the dreary skyline across the muddy Mississippi River. It was only then that my pulse sped up. I punched out Sautin’s private number on my cell phone and closed my eyes as I listened to the pulse echo in my ear. I had one more play left and I prayed it would work.
He picked up on the third ring.
I chose brutal directness to cement my intent. “Sautin,” I said. “It’s done. You wanna see the package?” I had every finger crossed on my free hand.
There was a long pause on the other end. “Ahh…no. At least not yet.” Another pause and I could almost see him biting his lip, not sure whether to be relieved or frightened. “No problems?” he asked. Even on the cell he was paranoid and he’d never been before.
“Like a charm,” I said. Then I got down to the real business. There was still the disposal to worry with but that shouldn’t concern him; the only thing he needed to do was handle the secretary. She needed to keep her mouth shut, no missing person’s report for a day or so. Until the loose ends could be tied away, I said.
He unhesitatingly agreed and I slowly uncrossed my fingers. I hung up several seconds later. Then I went back inside. Annie looked up quickly when I entered the soundproof room, but most of the fear was gone, or at least as much as I could tell.
She made me uncomfortable, I guess because of the poison of Sautin and my own marked past. I stood close to the door, not wanting to approach her for a variety of reasons, many of them which I couldn’t voice. Mistrust still leaked from her brilliant blue eyes.
I reached inside my jacket and withdrew an envelope I hoped would help reassure her. She didn’t look like the type who’d be open to bribery but she’d have to trust me on this one. And we didn’t have much time; Sautin’s recent instability might make him prone to change his mind about seeing the body. I already knew his thread was fast unraveling.
I opened the envelope and reached inside, withdrawing what it contained. There were twenty one-hundred dollar bills awaiting transformation into Traveler’s Checks. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, but there was no way we were going back to her place. I still had a plane ticket yet to buy, but the table had to be set a little at a time. If at all…
I said,
“Everything I told you’s true. You’re in grave danger and if you want to live to see tomorrow you better listen to every word I say. Because I’m the man sent to kill you and we don’t have the time, and I don’t have the energy to explain why. I’m gonna give you this money and you have to come with me to Baton Rouge. You’re done with New Orleans. You’re not safe here; you should be dead. Believe me if you’ve never believed anything else in your life. Whether you’re gonna remain alive depends on you. I can’t buy your airline ticket for you, and I can’t drag you screaming into the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport. You’ve got to trust me. Guy I work for wants you dead, believes you’re already dead. I just got off the phone with him and told him so. But the only thing that concerns me at this moment is getting you out of town and on a plane back to your family. You have to believe this. If you resist or give me away; if you remain in the States a day longer, you will die. But like I said, I can’t drag you to Baton Rouge bound and gagged. You have to come of your own free will. And that’s just the way it is…”
I finished the lecture and lit another cigarette. It was all up to her now.
The change came first in her eyes, of course. I saw her brain working feverishly behind them and it didn’t take much longer for her response. “All right, I’ll go with you,” she said, showing no sign of fear now. In fact, her resolve set me back. Definitely something peculiar, something apart from this world about her. Like a glimpse out of the corner of your eye or a smell you can’t quite put a name to. Something as tenuous as a foggy night. Again I felt the presence of something unworldly, perhaps otherworldly circling around us as I set about cutting the tape which bound her wrists and ankles. “But I do not think it will work,” she admitted, and I only then realized how thick her accent was. “I do not carry my passport to class.”
I reached into my back pocket and pulled it out, having fished it from the house on the way over. I handed it to her and she took it without a word.
***
Within the next thirty minutes we fled New Orleans, headed for Baton Rouge. I went straight for the airport; the sooner she had the ticket the better because I wanted her on the earliest flight available. The chance that Sautin would put his nose to the ground on this one was unpredictable (I knew he wasn’t thinking straight), but I didn’t want any fuck-ups. I figured I had a day before things fell apart, tops.
As it’s turned out, I had a day and a half. Even though the flight didn’t get booked as planned and I had to leave Annie at a Roadway Inn with a purse full of Traveler’s Checks, that’s how it turned out. As far as I know…
I hope she’s over the Atlantic by now, but how can you know for sure? I’ve done what I could. There have been no calls from Sautin; he has not been to my place. Perhaps when I walk into his office this morning he will be honestly surprised I have betrayed him. I want to see that in his eyes; that, and fear.
***
I drove back to New Orleans as satisfied as I could reasonably be that she was safe. She’d pulled it off at the airport counter, no hysterics, no finger-pointing while security dragged me away. I hadn’t thought she would by that time
, because maybe she couldn’t. That would be like stopping a movie before the final scene. There has to be a conclusion.
And with this I supply it.
***
Almost six fifteen. The sun has already begun to burn through the blanket of fog huddled down upon the buildings, and I saw the light in the old couple’s place go on above the sink ten minutes ago. I guess the longer you live the earlier you rise. Maybe in the end you don’t sleep at all, just waiting for the end to come.
Anyway, that’s it. That’s the story, set down and recorded, and I can’t change anything about any of it. What’s done is done, as the old saying goes. The last couple days have been a fine time for thinking on the run, putting off for later the thing that has caused all the trouble in the first place. But, right or wrong, it’s done. Finally finished.
Maybe there is a purpose to life and everyone’s got a particular part to play. I don’t know what that says about free will, but by now I don’t see that it matters. You do what you do, because, inside, you have to. You just have to balance yourself out in the end. When you hear the alarm you better damn well take heed...
***
And with this Jesse Avery reached over and clicked off the recorder. He carefully placed the stack of five cassettes into the box with the D.A.’s address crudely scrawled across the front. The alarm clock went off and he jumped, having not remembered to turn it off the night before. He stared at it for several moments, only then realizing he wouldn’t need it anymore. Then he gathered the box and left the apartment to walk the three miles to Sautin’s office.
Chapter 20:Curtain
The street bore its standard traffic of bustling people, even at this early hour. It was getting on toward the end of the week, and everyone sprinted toward whatever finish line they’d set for themselves. Jesse, however, walked slower than usual, taking his time to watch all the drama of both mindless and purposeful action. All the serious, worried faces, the tight lips and pinched brows. Occasionally a smile that vanquished the storms surrounding it. A presence, it seemed, hung in the air, something perpetually waiting…
Jesse pulled up at a newspaper dispenser pushed into a tight crease outside a barber shop. Same old news, same old day. Nothing about the trials he’d been through, nothing about the grave duty he went to fulfill. Nothing at all out of the ordinary except the impetus that had him by the throat. He saw the vision in his mind, the long, withstanding dream of the man racing along in the truck. And then the boy in the ditch, breaking over the verge of road into the truck’s path. His father had felt this thing, even if the summons had not been his to fulfill. That spoke of, if not eternal, then surely lasting power.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked on, empty-handed. He’d dropped the package into a mailbox outside his apartment building. Only another block to the office, but he kept his pace studied, his eyes on the many faces as he walked, unnerved by the images that assailed him with every feature he took in. Secrets swirled in the air half visible, gaudy little hints and indiscretions, voyeuristic happiness, and the depths of solitude breathing within the throng.
When he reached the building, he actually sighed in relief before taking hold of the handle in the brass plate and swinging the door back to the street. Enough was enough; the sensation trip (perhaps from lack of sleep) was wearing him thin.
He didn’t choose covert tactics to spirit him to the top floor, but neither did he say anything to the few people he passed in the hallway, the ones he rode the elevator with, on the way up. He just went as he was used to: like an unintentional ghost, hardly taking the trouble to part the air before him.
Jesse knew the receptionist’s desk would be empty before the doors even slid back at the fifth floor. Indeed, his premonition was made concrete. Through the glass partition behind it, Sautin’s office doors were thrown wide, the desk lamp casting a murky glow, concealing a familiar shadow sitting behind it in the leather chair.
His heart beat madly then; was it possible Sautin already knew, that his dreams had changed to portents of doom? A long-shot, sure, but not out of the realm of possibility. The man might be losing his mind but he was still savvy enough to know when someone was fucking him. It had a particular feel you just couldn’t shake.
As the elevator doors began sliding shut in front of him Jesse came to his senses. He stuck out his foot, breaking the beam of light at the floor, and the doors jerked back as if in surprise. He stepped out of the elevator and covered the remaining twenty feet to the receptionist’s desk. He pushed through the foyer entrance and walked into Sautin’s office, making his way straight for the chair he’d sat in plenty of times before.
The shadow was Sautin all right, curled up in the chair like some fat tomcat, though not nearly as confident as one now, it seemed. The man’s head was down, his face cradled in his hands. It sounded like he was crying. Jesse sat down and Sautin’s worried fingers stopped kneading the flesh above his brows. Then he looked up with hideous, red-rimmed eyes. If had had been crying, there were no tears to prove it.
“My Jesse,” Sautin whispered across the desk. The grating rasp in his voice raised hackles on Jesse’s shoulders. And with it Sautin leaned across the desk, his nose inches from its surface. “Something wrong,” he said as neither question nor comment. As simply a statement of fact.
Jesse looked down at his lap, studied his hands.
Sautin licked his lips and pushed away from the desk, once again shrouding himself in darkness. The whole room stank of whiskey. A mere splash of the stuff remained at the bottom of the bottle which sat just left of the desk lamp. Jesse couldn’t see his face but the question was plain enough this time.
“You think people got purpose?” the rasping voice asked.
“Nahh,” Jesse lied.
“Well I do kid.” The evil laugh trailed out of his mouth and floated in the air above his head. A hint of smoke or fog followed along but there were no cigarettes burning. The windows were tightly screwed down, and the A/C didn’t seem to reach this part of the building. Jesse began to sweat. “Never woulda believed it one month ago. Without the dream I’d never believe it now, but ya gotta recognize signs when they come.”
Jesse hoped the wraithlike man seated behind the light didn’t see him wince at the suggestion. Because he knew exactly what Sautin was talking about even though their trails had diverged dramatically, regardless if Annie was on the plane or not. “Yeah, I guess when you get a sign you gotta follow…” he repeated mindlessly.
Sautin disregarded Jesse’s reply. Again the evil laugh swirled through the air. “Never will forget it. Live ta be a goddamn hundred and nine and it wouldn’t change a thing! Signs! Goddammit! I knew it! Somewhere down deep I always knew it!” He slapped his hands to his chest. “Look at me! All those years on the streets, cutting out my niche. But always in the shadows like some bitch-dog that can’t come inside the house. Shit! Important men have come to me! Me! Goddammit, Jesse, you should know that….
“When I saw her in the dream I knew what had to be done, but there was something naggin me down deep. I wasn’t gonna be the one allowed to carry it out! That’s the thing I still can’t understand, but it was plain as my face in the mirror.” He paused and coughed briefly into his palm. “And Jesse,” he continued. “You have done a great thing. I know I can’t convince you a that; I really can’t even explain it to myself, but you have done a great thing. Whether an old fable can come true or not now is an option that’s been erased.” He leaned closer into the light so Jesse could see his face “We’re saviors, boy. And the world will never even know it.”
What followed brought lucidity back to Sautin’s strained, wild gaze.
“You’re wrong,” Jesse said. He had never rebuked Sautin and the surprise showed on the man’s puffy face.
“What the fuck d’you say?”
Jesse pushed himself further into the leather chair. “I said, ‘you got it wrong.’ We’re not saviors. Not of anything.”
The s
hock passed out of Sautin’s face and the smile crept back. There was still a look of wariness, but now it seemed Sautin would content himself setting this wayward child straight. He held up his right hand and pointed at the ceiling, the smile growing at the corner of his lips. “Oh, no. You’re the one who’s wrong, boy. Completely wrong. Some people are made of different stuff. Stronger stuff. Some people avoid early death for that one reason alone.” This made Jesse think of his propensity for invisibility but he remained quiet. He watched Sautin take the last pull from the whiskey bottle before going on.
“You know I was almost killed as a child?” he asked, cocking his eyebrow behind the bottle. “I was too young to remember much, but there is a brilliant frozen moment in my head. My mother had fallen asleep on the couch watching soaps and I was playing outside. I ended up on the highway and a truck almost ran me down like a dog.” Sautin saw the realization in Jesse’s eyes but took it for something else. “But it didn’t because my purpose wouldn’t allow that to happen. The driver was killed. But I lived…I lived to fulfill my duty. And that duty is done.”
Jesse cleared his throat violently. He had not been wrong about the dream then. But it was finally time to pull away the mask. He reached out and gripped the edge of the man’s desk, pulling himself closer so the Pretender would not misunderstood what he said.
“Your purpose runs counter to mine,” he said softly. “You only got it half-right. It took me a while to get a finger on it but the girl helped me see. Maybe she is some sort of crazy puzzle piece, but then again, aren’t we all? Every last one of us.” Sautin sat up ramrod straight in the shadows cast from the lamp. His breathing was suddenly more forceful though he didn’t say a word. “Anyway,” and Jesse pushed back to the confines of the leather chair at his back. “You always do your own work. You should known that. It’s what you’ve always told me,” and this time Jesse smiled.
“Because I didn’t do it, Aldo. You wanted me to kill an innocent girl and I didn’t do it. I bought her a plane ticket, gave her some money, and got her the hell away from here. If you can still get at her it won’t be because of me.”