The twelve playhouses remaining went fast, and Mrs. Coelacanth was somewhat less than pleased about it. She had to dicker and dodge, connive and overpromise, delivering care and housing to the flood of squalling, disturbed, damaged and psychically horrified children. Dealing with Department of Youth Services in Concord, New Hampshire for two houses full of underage children was a week of maniacal sweat-work making a triangle of her, DYS and the extremely reluctant Derry police. Often foster care was the best answer, although it was often a bad answer.
The same proved true of Boston.
And each time she had to deal with Null, he reminded her that his cure for reneging on a deal with him was casual homicide, and she had no doubt that he could do it. Or would do it. He was a worry and whenever the anonymous caller ID popped up on her cell phone screen, she would stiffen up with fright and unease.
Her hands trembled, fumbling the phone.
Null and Janis took six of the potentially hardest playhouses to hit and left the softest ones for Boyd, who would kindly convince their staff that it would be better to turn themselves in to Boston PD than face a duo of psychopaths who would without hesitation torture them to death (or in Janis’ case, outright slaughter them, something Null grudgingly made peace with). If that failed, then Detective Third Grade Byron Wurdalaka would make the collar. After they saw the cell phone videos of Null deconstructing humans, the same video streaming all over the dark web world of kiddie porn and not just on the servers that Brother Ray enslaved, they were quick to flip.
Knowing that Null would come.
Knowing that Null was inevitable.
Null was becoming an umbral legend of the street—something unseen you never wanted to see. A name you didn’t want to hear spoken in connection to anyone you knew, anything you remotely cared about, anything that might come back to you. It was becoming bad luck to even mention the existence of what had once been easy to call “that zombie fuck Null.” Whatever humor had been once attached to the name had given way to literal terror. You could talk about the Gangsta Boyz as the reigning meth operators in Boston, make jokes about how they put the meth in Methuen. It was becoming clear, though, that to even refer to the shot caller of that gang might actually wind up getting you tortured and killed without ever knowing why.
He was insane and just did things like that.
The man with the name you don’t say.
If videos and posts about something as heinous and evanescent in specific knowledge as the Tall Man, Slenderman or The King in Yellow could go viral, then that’s what happened to the grotesque, gore-soaked and vengeful exploits of Joseph Xavier Null.
The day when Mrs. Coelacanth finished with the kids, was the same day she took unscheduled leave and seriously contemplated her retirement.
Any cell phone tone from then on triggered dire palpitations.
Any tone at all.
And Null wasn’t done.
No, there was still work to do.
There were going to be runners.
They never had any sense that they would be running straight into Null. A decisive demurral was the best bet. Why would that guy care? They were just equity partners, investors in an operation that had gone from being an outpouring of staggering profits to rudderless dysfunction and then at last to being completely belly up.
A dead loss for everyone.
Thoughts of the children never entered their minds, even once.
To the equity partners, the children were simply the wrecked and damaged inventory of a business that now had no further use for them, unable to monetize even their basic resale value.
The problem simply stated was this: Null actually remembered the children. The late Legere had affirmed that Null was seeking retribution and that he was a stone psychopath. If that were true, then there would be no reasoning with him, no buying him off, no reliance on common sense to give them the protected exemption they were used to.
The remaining equity partners realized, after viewing the gruesomely visceral stream of Hal Champerty’s confession, without collusion or even an exchange of emails, social media postings or DMs, that it was time to be anywhere but Boston. Massachusetts. The east coast. America. They were all on Null’s list—which was, as the streaming video captures confirmed—one of the worst places to be anywhere on this earth.
However, like most people who are encouraged to evacuate a place by an indisputable set of facts, they procrastinated. They felt somehow that they had a window of time.
They didn’t know Null had slammed the window shut.
Beatrice Bronfein was looking to park some of her trust fund assets into an REIT and was being shown a commercial property, a parking garage in Brighton, when for no apparent reason the broker who was enthusiastically trying to sell it to her just ran off. She turned her head to locate him but found Null instead.
“You’re smaller than I thought,” she said, mustering false bravery.
“The hype makes me look that way. I’m actually of average height.”
“How much do I gotta pay you to get rid of you?”
“Oh, I don’t want your money.”
“Think if I scream loud enough, someone will come?”
“Why not try that? You’ll be screaming soon anyway.”
“You want me to scream?”
“I do. As much as I want anything.”
They stared at each other for a long, silent moment.
In the distance was were the echoes of the cars.
Beatrice—looking like some oddly dowdy, overaged millennial in yoga pants, hoodie and watch cap—dropped her handbag and started screaming. She put everything she had into it, her body quaking with the force of it.
Null made sure she kept screaming until he crushed her voice box at the end.
* * *
Hortense Gallimaufry had just finished shopping at Whole Foods, hefting two full grocery bags as she waddled out to her Saab in the crowded parking lot.
She felt a gentle tapping on her shoulder from behind and a firm hand grabbing at the handle of one of the paper shopping bags.
“I’ll help you with that,” said Null.
Hortense recognized him and her heart sank, yet she continued grasping the shopping bag full of groceries. “Thanks. My car is right over there.”
“Let’s go then.”
She opened her hand and let him take the bag.
They walked slowly together to where the Saab was parked, and for all the world, looked like friends, gabbing cheerfully.
The world is seldom the way we see it.
Hortense looked like a distressed elementary school teacher, homely, coke-bottle glasses, beige & olive drab clothing, a cardigan, an ill-fitting blouse and skirt. Her face was puffy yet unlined. Null carried the aspect of a dingy, homeless man.
“Really, you’re going to kill me right here, in broad daylight? In a Whole Foods Parking Lot?” She tried her best to seem amused. She wasn’t.
“Well, that was the plan,” said Null, as he loaded her bag of groceries into the back of the Saab after Hortense opened the hatch.
“You must be crazy. There’s too many people around. They’ll stop you. Now that I know what you’re going to do, when I leave here, I’ll disappear before you can try it again.” She laughed a strained, nervous laugh. “You didn’t really think this through at all, did you?”
“I admit I was a little fuzzy on the details.”
“I don’t see how you managed to fuck Hebe Group up beyond all repair. Just look at you. You’re a joke. But everyone’s so shit scared of you they won’t even say your name. How does that work?”
“My reputation precedes me.”
Null took the other bag from Hortense, which she was gripping so tightly that her fingers were turning red and the knuckles of each finger were white and loaded it in as well. She let go of it easily. Hortense was sweating and her breathing was heavy, labored. The sun beat down on her with unusual heat and when the breeze blew, she felt annoying pinpricks on her skin where her sweat had gathered.
“I’m pretty good with improvisation, though. Would you like to see?”
“No thanks. I need to go anyway.”
“Yes, Hortense, quite right. You really do need to go,” he said pleasantly.
Null opened the driver’s side door for her and as she was climbing in, he pushed her down suddenly in a rapid, cruel movement, pulled an old-fashioned, spring-loaded switchblade from his coat pocket and went to work on her.
Null was right.
No one stopped him.
Her hopeless screaming was simply swallowed up by the casual, bustling activity of the Whole Foods parking lot in the warm afternoon.
* * *
Mike Withers was just leaving the Downtown CrossFit gym, covered with a light coating of perspiration still dressed in his fatigue sweats and striding with purpose and swagger toward the gym exit. He looked like a hawk, with his close-cropped head craned forward and his aquiline nose pointing the way like an arrow. Null stopped him in his tracks.
“Sorry, man, I’m not carrying any cash on me. Just finished my workout. I’ll get you next time, okay, buddy?”
“No need to worry. I don’t want any money.”
“Get out of my way then.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll make you, then.”
“Do you really want to do this here? In the lobby of your gym? If so, it suits me.”
“Dude, you’re a little guy. I’ll take you apart.”
“It might seem that way, but it won’t work that way. Maybe you don’t recognize me. Take a look and think for a minute.”
Mike squinted to cut down on the glare from sunlight streaming in through the picture windows of the lobby of the gym. The guy was a shapeless, overdressed hulk, medium height, scarred face in the shadows of his hat. Then it slowly occurred to him what he was meant to see. The man looked confusingly different in bright daylight—the grime, shabbiness and dark shapelessness of his attire; his middling height; the ridiculous porkpie hat that shadowed a face distorted by scars, recent swellings and contusions. Mike’s heart was seized with fear even as he swallowed back on it.
A reflex occurred like a spasm—a small hiccup—causing Mike to take a half-step backward.
He felt a chill consume him.
“Holy shit! You’re him!” he shouted, not caring who heard him, and although they did hear him clearly, onlooking passersby simply quickened their pace to get out the door that much sooner. Mike started reaching frantically for something in the gym bag that was slung over his right shoulder.
“By the time you pull it, Mike, I’ll have emptied a full clip into you. I already know where my iron is. Don’t bother trying to find yours.”
Mike let his arms go limp by his sides.
“That’s better.”
“Yeah, you’re armed. I can see that. You’re always armed. So the fuck what? You want to go and hold court with me right here and right now?”
“Your choice, Mike. We can either do it here or you and I can go for a ride in that SUV of yours. It’s a fancy one, right? What is it?”
“It’s a Land Rover.”
“A bit too much car for Boston and all its cow paths and rotaries, isn’t it?”
“It’s handy in the winter.”
“Take me for a ride.”
“I thought that’s what you were doing to me.”
“It’s all in how you look at it.”
“Fine. Follow me.”
“Oh, I know where you’re parked, Mike. I’ll be right alongside of you. And I’ll take that bag. You’re probably tired after your strenuous workout.”
Mike half-shoved the bag at him, hoping it would throw Null off balance and he could make a run for it. It didn’t. Null prodded him hard in the side with the barrel of the Browning Hi Power through his coat.
“What is it that you do in this gym again? What kind of workout?”
“Crossfit,” mumbled Mike. “You know, like the name of the gym?”
“They say that’s rough on the joints.”
“At this point, does that even really matter?”
“No, not at all,” Null replied, prodding him toward the door.
The cheerful young brunette receptionist in her tight, sparkling white Downtown CrossFit tee shirt at the check-in counter through the window that separated the lobby from the gym spied them both. She waved goodbye to Mike with a great, toothy smile. Null waved back at her, without returning her smile.
“Why are you laughing, Mike?”
“Jesus, don’t you have a sense of humor?”
“No, Mike,” Null said as they walked together toward the parking lot in the crispness and golden light of the late afternoon. “I don’t. But I’m glad you have one.”
“Why?”
“So you can fully appreciate the irony of the next few minutes.”