The bilious, misbegotten orange sign—the brightest fixture of the entirety of the Muddy Charles Hotel—went dark, possibly forever. Even the “Vacancy” sign below it was turned off, including the “No.”
Window-shaded dim and shadowed—lights off in the registration office—the Muddy Charles betrayed no inkling of the flurry of activity occurring within it. The Gangsta Boyz were now transformed into the most expensive cleaning crew in the history of the greater Boston area. Meanwhile, Brother Ray drove in from Methuen, bringing more cleaning supplies, a short store of meth and an enclosed utility trailer hitched up to his Grand Cherokee for the hauling and transport of corpses. The corpses were to be bound for deposit in the quarries around Cape Ann and Gloucester, also Fletcher Quarry in Milford and Merrill Quarry in Westford.
All the decent quarries more conveniently located a stone’s throw away in Quincy had since been filled in with 800,000 tons of dirt from the Big Dig in back in 2000, doubtless hiding more of the uncounted human detritus and debris of incarcerated Boston gangster supreme Whitey Bulger.
The Gangsta Boyz were working up a sweat, scrubbing out blood, cleaning up gore and, wherever necessary, ripping up carpet to be incinerated. Policing of the Muddy Charles was going to be an all-night operation.
Null presided over the scene, a grim specter of doubt and assurance, fish-eyed and brooding, silently calculating. No one thought to ask him to pitch in; it never occurred seriously to anyone. He was the shot caller.
He had the keys.
No one had any inkling of disputing this when they saw what he did to what once had been Hal Champerty, kiddie porn equity partner of Hebe Group. Null took him long past any beating into some other plane of extreme torment.
An astonished solemnity had descended upon the scene when Null had not only passed the point of no return, he had already arrived at his planned destination.
His destination was punishment.
The bare-knuckle brawl in the second level started conventionally enough. The bigger, huskier, albeit older, opponent against the much shorter, impossibly scarred bag of bones. It really didn’t look like Null had a chance. From a numbers standpoint, no other conclusion could be expected than a catastrophic loss for Null. Ronald had already calculated the numbers and craned his neck forward with eager anticipation to watch the utter deflation of the shot caller. Do-rag shifted nervously from one foot to the other, not knowing whether working for a stone psycho like Ronald would be any better than working for Null.
It was clear Null wasn’t going to survive this; that much was made plain after Hal landed a piledriver dead bang to the face that nearly knocked Null off his feet. Null countered with a surprise roundhouse kick to Hal’s gut, but that only served to anger him. After that, Hal went to town on him with big fists hammering punishing blows, not letting up until it appeared Null was about to go down.
Only he didn’t go down.
He went up.
Somehow, Null effected a weird flip that put him on Hal’s back, his arms now wrapped around Hal’s bull neck.
Hal was frantic, bouncing off the walls of the corridor, but Null, in the act all the essence of odd calm, merely squeezed his arms together progressively tighter. This coupled with Hal’s frantic motions, starved his brain of oxygen and so down he went.
And when he went down, he never got up again.
Slowly, methodically, with icy purpose, Null beat Hal until he flopped over loose with surrender, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.
You would have thought that would have ended it.
It didn’t.
The best way to describe it simply and without dwelling over the searing, naked horror of what the Gangsta Boyz and the twinks were witnessing was this: Null took Hal apart with his bare hands, taking his time, doing it slowly while Hal made noises that were as clearly not human anymore as Hal was not human anymore—piece by piece, bit-by-bit, minute-by-minute until the crackling death rattle emerged from Hal’s ravaged throat that at last signaled the dead end.
Hal’s dead end.
And all the while, just as Null had predicted, Hal had begged him to let him talk, to stop the anguish so he could tell Null everything he knew. Null encouraged him to talk and proceeded to disassemble him anyway.
It was like watching a preying-mantis demolish a beetle. Fast, subtle—ruthless.
Null listened intently, absorbing every word, yet not missing a beat in the inexorable destruction of Hal Champerty.
No one spoke or hardly moved at all until Null had—as if in attendance at some holy mass, some ancient ritual practice whose effect would be tainted by even the slightest, understandable human reaction to it—finished with Hal. Not even Do-rag turned away and vomited his guts out at what he was seeing. He forced himself to look. Dominic stared hard into it, gulped, and swallowed harder. Ronald had the shakes and stuck his hands in his pockets to hide them.
At the final sigh, Null bounced up from the rug and motioned for Do-rag to help him on with his coat and for Ronald to remove his hat from his head and place it back on Null’s.
“Uneasy lies the head that wears the hat,” said Null to absolutely no one laughing at all.
* * *
The twinks were gathered in the biggest suite at the head of the third level, where some of the worst clean-up had yet to be done. Brother Ray had busily rigged the phone system to an outgoing message of shutdown, took the website offline, set-up auto-pay on all the bills, insurance and the mortgage. He rigged the phones to give an outgoing message stating the Muddy Charles was closed due to extensive renovations. Null had instructed that the Muddy Charles continue to exist, causing no uproar among creditors until he arranged to have it torched, or perhaps something better. All the other Gangsta Boyz cleaned and scrubbed all evidence of death away. And Null had the twinks assembled before him as if a general reviewing his troops.
“Alright boys, as you probably figured out, we’re into a brand-new ballgame.”
One shirtless twink with long auburn hair and a face full of stubble piped up in a voice that broke, “So what. That means we work you now, right?”
Fourteen other twinks milled and murmured assent.
“No. That game’s rained out for keeps. You don’t work for anybody anymore, at least not doing what you’ve been doing.”
“You’re not a pimp, like Oliver downstairs?”
“You mean the late Oliver. No. I’m nothing like that. I just sell meth. Good, old-fashioned straight up drug dealing.”
“Holy fuck! I’d take a bump of some of that shit,” the stubbled, shirtless twink commented.
“It’s good you said that. Most certainly you’ll all get some bumps, if that’s what you want, on the house. No charge.”
A chubby twink, also be-stubbled, moved up to the front and replied, “Dude, that’s sweet. We all like a bump from time-to-time. Usually comes out of our money.”
“Not this time, it won’t.”
“So, what do we have to do for that, kill somebody?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. You do.”
* * *
They were there again in the same conference room at the top of One Beacon. Steve and Martha Privilegiata, looking like they had just stepped out of a J. Crew ad, Beatrice, looking like an apple-sculpture kitchen witch in her oversized hoodie, wizened and feisty Mike, still radiating the jar head, marine feel, his cheeks red with irritation.
Steve broke the silence and the tension. “Where the fuck is Hal?”
“He’s never late. I tried him on his cell but nothing,” said Hortense at her most mousey, backed with thick glasses, a puffy face and stringy hair. Hard to believe she had over a million salted away in various offshore accounts. She wore fuchsia crocs. The rest of the equity partners of what was left of Hebe Group weren’t doing nearly as well.
“This meeting’s not a joke—we’re not fuckin’ around!”
“Did anyone catch the death face page? There’s a bunch of new entries.” Mike was impatient, his wattles jittering as he spoke.
“We all got the link, saw the faces, counted up the bodies. We all got the message: Null’s the new owner of the twink hotel. The Muddy is lost,” said Steve.
Martha cleared her throat. “There was a face on the page, or it was supposed to be a face, but wasn’t really a face, more like a bloody skull. You don’t think—?”
“Hal’s not that stupid. He knew better to fuck around at the twink hotel when we’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by the meth king of Boston,” Steve said rubbing his chin.
“Is that who the little prick thinks he is?”
“No, Mike. It’s who the little prick fucking actually is, unfortunately. And he runs the Gangsta Boyz crew in the bargain.”
“You know this how?”
“Seems like everybody knows this but Boston PD.”
“They’re always the last to know.”
“If there was money in it, they’d know for sure. But the whisperings in 4chan and 8kun online say Null, who’s officially dead, they say, would rather kill a cop than pay one.”
“A prudent policy.”
Hortense smashed her fist down on the table. “Don’t you fucking idiots know we’re hemorrhaging cash? Hebe Group is cash negative and so are we.”
“Well, we’d all know that if Bernie Franking was alive, we’d be getting weekly statements.”
“I make my own statements,” snarled Hortense, no longer seeming so mousey, “and they’re telling me that we’ll be going broke if this takeover doesn’t end soon.”
“Maybe we should all just call it a day and pull out,” Beatrice said, lighting a long thin cigarette, taking a drag, waiting for a complaint about her smoking in a non-smoking area. She exhaled when no one bothered to make it.
“I’m for pulling out,” Mike grunted.
“Let’s vote on it,” Hortense suggested, ratcheting back down to mousey.
“Vote on what? Ending a veritable cash machine?”
Beatrice’s voice was husky and troubled. “Ending a deepening loss, Steve. I don’t see Hebe coming back from this. And who’s running things anyway? This Null fuck seems to have killed off management.”
“We’re managing it for now, until things get back on track. I’m managing things, maybe, because I don’t see anyone else here doing jack shit.”
“I think we should take what’s left of the principal that we put into this thing and cut our losses. Steve, at this point, I think you’re the only one, and maybe your wife I guess, who says we shouldn’t. You can’t justify our taking any more hits.”
“I have a vote too,” Martha seethed, “and you’re right. I’m with Steve. Before this clusterfuck, we saw astronomical profits, literally scads of cash roaring in until this wannabe gangster came along and pissed all over it. Well, there’s way too much money in KP for you to pull out now. Kiddie sex trafficking is the great goldmine of the twenty-first century. It’s the future! Cast-off neglected, unwanted kids made into little cash machines then sold off at a profit. There’s no end to it! There’s no end to them, especially now that the Republicans are running the show. The whole social safety-net was turned into tax breaks for people like us. Finally, we’re their best bet. Their only hope. And they just keep on coming.”
Hortense leaned forward, energized, her eyes wide behind coke bottle glasses. “So, Steve and Martha, you’re saying you’d like to buy us out?”
“We don’t have the liquidity to do that.”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s two against three, so you’re out-voted. Sorry, Privilegiatas,” Mike offered coolly. “It’s done.”
“Yeah,” Hortense said before yawning, “as of today, Hebe Group is shit-canned.”
Then there was a sound, a click that was thunderous in the pause of silence.
The door to the conference room swung open and just at the cusp of where the fluorescent light coming in from the hallway hit the dimly shadowed, unlit conference room, an outsized figure loomed in dark outline. He was both shaded and indistinct. In a low, near choke of a voice he said with a hint of menace:
“Now it’s a draw.”
* * *
“The days of rape for money are over. You birds are all free. As of right now.”
“Free to do what? Starve and die on the street? Find another pimp? What? You have no clue. Nobody here has a degree—some not even a high school diploma. Killing us won’t solve that.” The chubby twink, whose physical incarnation seemed to be that of a modern cherub, had a smiling, benign face that belied his complaint. Null didn’t have to think about it to answer him precisely when he finished.
“That’s all true. In this lousy economy, even the PhD’s are turning to crime and the shady underground world of profiteering. The straight world has nothing to offer you but hypocrisy, indifference, and bureaucratic contradiction. I can’t offer you anything better, and I don’t see any of you seeking to join The Gangsta Boyz crew.”
“Ain’t we a little bit too white for that?” the first, shirtless, stubbled twink piped up.
“I’m an equal opportunity employer.”
“Can we just go?”
“Certainly, but if you go to the cops, I’ll find you and kill you. Believe me, I will. As I’ve shown you tonight, I’m very, very good at it.”
“Nobody here wants nothin’ to do with the cops anyway. They’d probably buttfuck us, too.”
“You have a brain. Got a name to go with it?”
“Angelo.”
“Okay Angelo, and all of you, this is the deal: You can stay here for a couple of months. I’ve got some of my crew here running the things you can’t, seeing to provisions and payments, food and money for you. The rest will all be handled by you, however you want to divide it up. Maid service, laundry, cleaning and whatever else has to be done. Nobody gains admittance to this place but one of my guys and you. Nobody. Rule infractions will be handled only one way. Just one way. And I think you all know what that way is.
There was a low murmur of assent.
“You need anything; money, meth, food, cleaning supplies, anything like that, you can call a number I’m leaving for you at the front desk for Brother Ray. Or you can use Facebook or any other social media, including 4chan and Reddit. Brother Ray is on all of them most of the time under that name.”
“Do we really get free meth?”
“Yeah, you do, but you’re so skinny and wired I hardly think you need it. What’s the name, kid?”
“Norman.”
“You’ll definitely get your meth. Hopefully, Brother Ray can use some judgment and prevent you from killing yourselves with it. One thing we don’t need is a cop car, a fire truck and an ambulance parked outside to save your scrawny ass, calling attention to our little set-up here. Right now, Boston, Cambridge and Brighton PDs are blissfully ignorant. Let’s try and keep them happy.”
“Where do we go after this?” squeaked Norman.
“Well, after you’ve completed a little task for me, you can take the money I’ll be shelling out to you on a weekly basis that you didn’t spend and go anywhere you want. I have a friend who takes care of neglected, abused kids and gets them as much of whatever the social programs that haven’t been savaged by the Republicans as are available. I’ll set you up with her and she’ll find a place for you somewhere doing something, what, I can’t say. School might have to be involved.”
There were some noises of distaste accompanied by mild laughter that died down fast.
“We ain’t kids,” spat Angelo.
“Okay, anybody in this room but me over the age of eighteen?”
Silence.
“All you kids are eligible for something, and though my friend Mrs. Coelacanth may seem grouchy and unwilling, she will in fact pull out all the stops for you. If you don’t want to go that route, then I suggest when you leave here that you go buy yourself a bus ticket and get the fuck out of town, because Boston’s done with you. Probably, by then, I’ll be done with you too.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what that means.”
“So what? What kind of future do we get? What the fuck happens to us?”
“You get the future you get, make one choice or the other. Make no choice and see what happens. Making no choice is always the worst choice. I’m not Nostradamus.”
“We want the gak first,” said Angelo firmly. “Then we can negotiate.”
If Null were more human, if he had had the slightest sensitivity or basic empathy within him at all, he might have laughed at that. He didn’t. Instead, he enunciated his response with the dead tone of a computer text-to-speech program:
“This isn’t a negotiation. This is an ultimatum.”
“Nobody else is talkin’ much, so tell me, what do we gotta do?” asked Norman in a reedy, high voice that had yet to fully change.
“You’re going to have to kill somebody for me.”
“You’re fucking kidding—out of your freaking mind!”
“I’m not kidding, but you’re most likely right that I’m out of my mind. Nevertheless, your choices about how to deal with that are limited. So, unless one of you has a gun on you somewhere and is ready to shoot me, I suggest you go along with it.”
Norman shuffled his feet and frowned for a moment. “Who do you want me to kill?”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone. I want all of you to kill someone—collectively.”
“Who is it gets the 187?”
“No one important. One of your old clients.”
“That might be okay then if he’s one of the sicko’s.”
“I don’t think you’ll have a problem with it.”
“Who is it then?”
“Just a guy,” Null said, apparently distracted; the only response to that being the labored breathing of everybody else in the room. Then he added, “Just a guy who likes to fuck little boys to death.”