Chapter 20: Lincoln’s End
The Bull picked up the blood-stained rag and wiped his knuckles, knowing it would be a while before they were finished with this. William was fucking pissed. The Bull noticed a cut on his right middle finger and let it bleed into the rag, sucking at his teeth as he did so. The rest of the blood was Lincoln’s. He’d always hated the scumbag duct taped to the chair in front of him and now he had the sonofabitch right where he wanted him.
Lincoln’s face was a swollen, dripping mess. All his front teeth (top and bottom) were scattered either on the floor or in his lap. The beating had been going on for quite a while now. It only stopped when the Bull got winded, or when Lincoln passed out. Then the smelling salts were in order; eight broken caplets also scattered the floor with the rest of the shit down there.
William Franklin sat silently at the table on the other side of the room. There was a lethal, animal look in his eyes as he chain-smoked. The old fan worked noisily in the corner. He pursed his lips and knocked the ash off the end of his cigarette.
The Bull looked across the room at William. “You ready for me to start on this motherfucker again, Boss?” He pitched the bloody rag into the wash basin in the corner. William leaned forward, didn’t say anything as he studied the beaten man slumped in the chair. He held up his hand and the Bull didn’t say anything else. He knew how William was.
Very slowly, William took out another cigarette from his pack and lit it up. He took a drag and held it out in front of him like some strange specimen he’d found as the smoke swirled up to the ceiling. The groans coming from the figure taped to the chair signaled he was coming back to the world. This time they’d let him come back naturally. In his own good time. William waited awhile as Lincoln’s eyes fluttered and his groans got louder. They’d really fucked him up. When Lincoln finally raised his head and looked across the table William smiled. “Well, hello there, beautiful. Back from your nap I see.” He held the cigarette out so Lincoln could see it and dropped it on the floor. He ground it into the concrete with his heel. The implication was clear and the beaten man across from him moaned again weakly. It was all he could manage as an answer and in the last few hours he’d learned that everything with William Franklin demanded an answer. If not the Bull would go to work again. William stared off across the room.
Lincoln fought to keep his head semi-erect. His knew his face was broken; a train accident couldn’t have felt worse. The Bull had fists like hammers. He just wanted it all finished. Regardless, he did try again. “I doan know what you’re tryin to get here. Kickin the shit outa me…” His breath came in short, jabbing bursts; snot and blood dribbled out from his shattered nose.
William pursed his lips and made a motion with his hand. The Bull let Lincoln have another hard punch to the ear. Now there were no more words, just blubbering gibberish. He already knew he was history. Regardless of what he said.
Through his haze of pain, he could just barely make out the long shape of William rising from the chair. The man stopped with his head in shadow, maybe from the one bulb or (more likely) from the blood pooling in Lincoln’s eyes. The groan that escaped him unwittingly was cut short.
“You are going to talk. Don’t think for a moment that you’re not.” William rounded the table. He squatted down to Lincoln’s eye level. Slapped the man and then deftly caught Lincoln’s reeling chin between thumb and forefinger and ripped it around so that they stared eye to eye again.
Lincoln tried to swallow and the iron hand pinching his chin slid down around his throat and squeezed. Lincoln’s eyes bulged as William leaned in closer. The businessman’s voice was more controlled now, only his eyes were still completely mad. The other hand came up, the finger wagging beneath Lincoln’s better eye. “Every one of you nickle-and-dimers make me want to puke. You think because a man like me chooses to do a little business with you pukes it gives you license to fuck with me. Well listen up, motherfucker. You’ve got that all wrong.” Lincoln’s face was wrenched into a humiliating funnel.
The granite-hard smile that followed collapsed the rest of William’s face. The finger came up again as the hand at Lincoln’s throat began raking painfully through his hair.
“Now,” William said lightly, patting his prisoner like a dog. “We have had enough games. The fun has been tremendous, but I’m tired. So, you tell me, you fucker. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BROTHER?!” and his fingers grabbed Lincoln’s hair and yanked his head back.
A high-pitched scream, like a woman’s, filled the room.
William let go of Lincoln with a show of disgust and backed away. He turned to the Bull. “You hear the little bitch?” he said. The Bull nodded but said nothing. He’d backed away from the heat of confrontation, and even though the shadows in the room made everything jumpy, he didn’t like what he saw in the face of the man who signed his checks. It reminded him far too much of Samuel.
William walked around the edge of the wooden card table where his pack of cigarettes was. He paused, then shook his head and spread his arms in Lincoln’s direction. “I’m a rich man, fucker. Like my father. Some say ‘because of my father,’ but I know those cowardly pukes don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. And they wouldn’t say that to my face. You know it’s true. I can see it in your eyes, Drug Man. My father chose to make money in his way and I choose to make it in mine. Nothing much separates us.” He threw a glance over to the Bull but found his henchman staring at the floor. Typical. William ground his back teeth together, deciding not to let the Bull off easy tonight either.
“We each have a way of conducting our business. That’s a safe assumption, right?” William said, making the Bull sweat. Screwing him into an answer. The big man nodded, never lifting his gaze from the floor. “Yeah. Every businessman does or he’s not in business very long.” He crossed to the chair and sat down. Took his time fishing out another cigarette from the pack, seeming almost to lose his train of thought.
“Filth like you,” he said, billowing smoke beneath the thin shard of light like a kettle as he focused back on Lincoln. “I’ve pictured this many times. The whole bunch of you, packed together like rats in some cheap dive. Patting yourselves on the back, pulling each others’ dicks about the contacts you’ve made. The important people you associate with. You collect the scraps that fall off my table and think it’s a feast. Just a bunch of lousy assholes sitting on barstools most of the time, pumping each other full of bullshit.” A sardonic grin cut the tirade short as William stared absently at the swaying bulb.
After a minute, he turned his glaring hatred back to Lincoln. The man moaned low in his chest but said nothing. “And while you’re content to jack-off each other’s egos, I sit here with the knowledge that I control your destinies. I say whether you live or die. I’m your God.” William stood up and took off his jacket. Held it out in front of him with one hand while he lit the lighter and burned a hole in the jacket, letting it go until the stink filled the room. Then, with a small flame beginning to curl above the threads, he worked the jacket into a ball and threw it across the room to the shop basin. There was a light hiss as the flame met water, then a tendril of smoke, then nothing.
William pointed across the room. “That, my friend, was worth a hell of a lot more to me than you are. And now the suit’s ruined. I can take the rest of it and drop it off the fucking pier out back, and not think twice. But know what, Drug Man?” he said. Lincoln managed a barely perceptible shake of his head.
“I’ll have another one tomorrow. Maybe not the same style or color, but I’ll have another one if I want it. Right now I’ve got about a hundred of these fuckers hanging in my closet. And every one of them is just as easily replaced as that one,” he said pointing at the sink.
“Are you starting to catch my drift, Drug Man?”
He paused a moment. “You’re the dirt on my shoes. You’re the shit that washes down the gutter when it storms. You’re just another suit on a hook, yesterday’s news, trash ready to be thrown out.
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“I’m heir to a shipping fortune, Drug Man. More money than your scrawny little ass could ever imagine. That’s what makes it so fucking funny. You little bugs never even question why I choose to associate with freaks and punks here in my own private little shit-hole. None of you fuckers ever takes a pause to wonder why I do what I do. I conduct my real business in private rooms at the top of the Sheraton. Places you’ll never see because you’re nothing. I’ve got penthouses up there. And that’s plural.” He stopped and picked the pack of cigarettes off the table. He lit another one and circled around to the front of the table, rested his ass on the edge. He picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue, studied it momentarily before flicking it away.
“Would you like to know why I do what I do?” William stared at the dirty walls and fidgeted with his free hand as if unable to stop this avalanche of words. He smoked for a moment, then crossed one leg over the other while picking away pieces of lint that were stuck there.
“You really want to know why we do this shit? I can tell you, it ain’t for the sense of adventure. Hell, we own the cops. How do you think I was able to get your sorry ass out of jail? You’re bought and paid for, Drug Man. Bought and fucking paid for.” He flicked an ash away, watched as it fell to the floor. “I’ll tell you why,” he said.
“There is something seriously wrong with me. My brother is a whole different story, but blood does run thick. Yeah, there is something gravely wrong with us. I love inspiring false confidence; I love breeding it; tending it. Especially from shit-kickers like you.” A mocking smile froze and slowly evaporated on his face.
“THAT’S WHY IT DRIVES ME BERSERK WHEN ONE OF YOU SHIT-KICKERS TRIES TO FUCK ME!!” he screamed, his eyes livid and vile. He bent over so they were eye level again.
“I’m not going to hit you. You understand that?”
Lincoln nodded, trying to slow his racing heart. William laughed sadistically and raised his cigarette hand. Rested it on Lincoln’s shoulder so that the smoke wafted into the man’s eyes. William patted him gently. The Bull slunk farther back in his corner.
Then William jammed the burning cigarette into the pulp that until a few hours ago had been Lincoln’s nose.
The reaction was instantaneous. The trapped man lurched and strained against the electrical tape holding him to the chair. He managed to scream as his feet scrabbled at the floor, the painful frenzy threatening to overturn him. He pitched about like this for a moment until collapsing limply.
William drew slowly off the blood-stained cigarette and blew a thick cloud of smoke onto the dripping, weeping man. He could tell there was not much left. Now, very quietly, he leaned closer and said, “I’m the most dangerous motherfucker of all, Drug Man. Of all. You understand that?” and he smiled into the room.
“You, my friend, have made a fatal mistake,” he said. He flipped the cigarette away to a corner, watched as the sparks flew. The Bull had as good as vanished.
He wiped a sleeve across his mouth. Then he leveled one finger at Lincoln. “You turned us on to this Paol fuck. You said he was all right. You said we could trust him.” He pursed his lips. “It’s just unfortunate for you that I, being the man I am, can’t let word get around that the Franklins can be fucked with. Can’t do it. Won’t do it.
“I talked to my man in Columbia. He tells me everything went off without a hitch, but here we are; no word, no plane, no coke, no brother, no nothing.” He examined his manicured nails. “I’ve also had a man watching Mr. Paol’s airfield in Thibodaux. Guess what…nothing.
“So now there’s really only one thing left, one thing I’ve really got to know. Where is my fucking money? Samuel is one thing. Granted, it’s trouble enough but I can handle it. But fucking with my money is another thing altogether. So, brass tacks, Lincoln. Where the fuck is Frederick Paol?”
The pinched, racing fear was alive in Lincoln’s eyes. Maybe the sack-of-shit really didn’t know, but that had nothing to do with anything. William was at a crossroads. If Samuel was dead (as by now he felt almost certain) he’d need to establish his own level of brutality. Up until now he’d always been safe in the shadows but the Day had finally arrived. He could feel it. It was time for a statement. A standard must be set.
Lincoln’s doom was sealed, and from the story in his eyes, he knew it too. But there was still more suffering to come. If he knew anything else, it would come out. And if not, fuck it. At this point all William was concerned with was end product.
He knelt down to one knee when he saw Lincoln’s lips moving, putting one arm across the trembling shoulders as he pulled the doomed man closer. Pulled him hard against the duct tape. He wanted everything now, every plea, every bargain, every lie. “Tell me about it,” he whispered with the same smoky eroticism that had blanched the Bull to the shadows long moments before.
Lincoln’s reply was reedy and wet. Exhaustion and pain made the words garbled and largely unintelligible. It took William several seconds to distinguish sense in the weak litany… “---tellin you, Mist Fra’lin, ‘Sus Christ, I doan know. Knew ‘im…’Nam. Neva fucked be ova ‘fore…neva trouble…’Sus, my mutha, man, swear…” he whispered in an increasingly fragile hiss. William grabbed the man’s wet hair and pulled him upright. Looked him in the eyes. Yeah, he was used up.
Perhaps a full minute passed in silence, save for the occasional sob. William waited patiently for these to subside before standing up and backing away. “Get the Redi-Mix. It’s time to finish this shit,” he dead-panned to the shadow barely breathing in the corner.
Lincoln immediately jerked back to life, his forehead hard against the loose tape that barely restrained it. He tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come. William remained impassive, watching him.
“No one cares here, Drug Man. There’s only us and I’m the worst fucking thing you can imagine.” He straightened to full height and walked back to the table.
Lincoln struggled on, seeming to find untapped reserves of strength as he watched the Bull pilfering around back there in the shadows. Before long he’d pulled free three fifty pound bags of Redi-Mix and laid them in the circle of light on the floor, along with a five-gallon bucket of water. He worked in eerie silence, as if afraid to breathe.
As the work continued Lincoln’s pleas grew louder. William finally held his hands up for quiet, but when he got no satisfaction he crossed the floor and slammed his right fist into Lincoln’s broken face. There were no more screams. Lincoln’s head came to rest with chin to chest. His lap began to pool with blood and mucus, and the only sounds were mouse-like squeaks and occasional rattling moans from somewhere abysmally deep.
“Save it for your Maker, Drug Man,” William intoned. “If Sam’s out of the picture I gotta make a statement. And unlucky for you, you’re it.” He watched in renewed silence as the Bull poured water from the old paint bucket into a small wheelbarrow he’d hauled out of the utility closet. Slowly, methodically, the Bull began mixing the concrete. It proved messy work but, like Lincoln, it was no more than a minor inconvenience.
When the large splash came at the end of the empty pier hours later, the moon had gone behind a cloud, and the two quiet men back there could make out nothing below the black surface of the Mississippi River. The Bull had his dick in his hand, pissing away Lincoln’s memory into the muddy current, wishing the dead a hasty hell.
William walked like a long, thin crease in the night along the length of pier, smoking one of his endless string of cigarettes as he trolled along through the many problems in his head. He felt deep down that Samuel was dead; there was a tingling in his spine, a curious sensation at the base of his neck. Just enough to let him know.
But that fucking Frederick Paol was another story altogether.