She opened the door to his room and popped her head in and flashed what some would call a winning smile. “Knock-knock.”
Before he could say “come in,” her high heels were clapping the linoleum.
“You hungry?” Marci asked, a few brown bags in hand, something she picked up from a local diner.
He was lying down, half in half out, barefoot, wearing jeans and a white tee. It was after 11 p.m. She’d brought a midnight snack. But one look at her best attributes made him hungry for something else altogether.
The chickster's designer blue skirt with its stylish vent in front offered a nice view of her inner thigh. She wore a long-sleeved gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the buttons undone to her cleavage, revealing the badge hanging around her neck. Strapped around her were black nylon shoulder holsters encasing her side arms. And of course Marci wouldn’t be complete without those calf-hugging boots.
“Sure.” He sat up.
“C’mon,” she said, encouraging him to get up. “Show you around.”
The contractor raised an eyebrow. He didn't trust her, but was rather curious about the place, what kind of facility it was and if there was a way out.
Beyond his cell door were hospital curtains. He soon learned they were facades which made the joint look like a care facility. Marci pushed them back, revealing something else entirely.
There was a desk facing away from his room. It was topped with coffee stains, cookie crumbs, newspapers and adult humor magazines. Across the way was a water cooler and doors to men’s and women’s restrooms. To the right was a set of black curtains, long and grim, completely covering one area. To the left was a giant space, like an auditorium. Big. Empty.
Framing it were a set of windows, huge, tall, rectangular. Black steel gates blocked access to the front door, dotted with padlocks and decorated with razor wire. Hanging from the ceiling were fluorescents. Not all of the bulbs worked. One or two flickered. The once white walls were vandalized with spray paint, streaks of red, blue and purple obscenities. In one corner were the words “I LOVE LISA” crossed out with a giant red “X.” There were also random jottings like “PAIN KILLER” and “WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD.”
She nudged him, handed him a brown bag, sat on the desk, unwrapped a pork barbecue sandwich and took a big bite.
“What is this place?”
“Can hardly recognize it anymore,” she said.
“Looks like a retail store.”
“Used to be. The economy killed it a few years back. Now it’s just 60,000 square feet of space sitting in the middle of nowhere.”
“Where?”
“Ever hear of Palmyra?”
He shook his head.
“There you go.”
With a fresh perspective on his surroundings, the contractor realized what room his cell was in. “Lay away?”
Marci confirmed that with a grin.
The thought amused him.
“Got it at a pretty low rate.”
“This place?”
“Yeah.” She took another bite.
“You bought it?”
“Uh huh,” she said.
“Low rate?”
“About $120,000.”
“How can you afford that?”
“Dad had good insurance. Mom was good at investments.”
“I'm sure they approve of all this.” He was being a bit sarcastic.
Much to his surprise, she offered a rather honest answer. “My dad was killed when I was a little girl. Few years later, mom got hitched to a guy who had a lot of money.”
“I'm sorry.”
“About?”
“Your father.”
“Thanks.”
He listened close to everything around him. The tap-tap-tap of her heels back-kicking the desk. The echo it created. And…nothing.
“Where are they?”
“Who?”
“Your people.”
“They’re here,” she said assuredly.
“Where?”
“Trust me,” she said. “One wrong move, they’ll turn you into Swiss cheese.”
The contractor let his eyes wander, figured that dark theater had a back stage and its own set of curtains, something they could hide behind and peek out from every once in a while. He looked up and saw the remnants of the store’s security system, dust-covered black spheres on the ceiling. He hated the thought of being watched.
“Tell me,” Marci asked with a breath of sultry, “when you went out on a job, was it fun?”
“Never boring.”
“It was probably a blast.”
“Yeah,” he said, mildly sarcastic.
She hitched up her skirt, crossed her shapely legs, leaned in and further turned on the charm. “I’m sure there was action, adventure.”
He moved his head this way and that, a here-and-there gesture.
“You got to hang with one of the FBI’s most wanted.”
“Yep.”
“You nearly blew off my head in Chicago.”
“Nothing personal,” he said.
“You even took out a credit card office. Tell me that wasn’t fun.”
“With Mazz around,” he said, “these things happen.”
“I'm sure,” Marci said. “You even helped out Suzy Homemaker.”
“Which one?”
“Alice in Boston.”
He turned to her and raised an eyebrow, curious.
“Well, I should say we. Cuz I let her go.”
“Really.” He was fascinated.
“She hired you to kill her husband, but she told you the truth about why.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“Truth goes a long way with me. And she deserved a second chance. We all do.”
He wasn't sure how to respond. Throughout their conversation on that darkened stage, he waited for what he was sure was the inevitable. He was sure she was warming up to him for a reason. He had a pretty good idea about what that was. But he just wasn't sure how, or when, the ball would drop. Filled with uncertainty, he watched her every move.
She downed her milk, crushed the carton, then tossed it over her shoulder. “Check this out.” She hopped off the desk. Her boots slapped the floor, creating an ear-popping echo. Then she clip-clopped to the darkest corner of the auditorium. On the way over she unwrapped a piece of bubble gum, put it on her tongue then threw the wrapper aimlessly.
Under a blanket of shadows was a long table. On it was most of the evidence she'd collected in May from the showdown in Jamaica Plain. It included the clothes the contractor was wearing that day: the designer blue jeans, black turtleneck, and leather jacket. The jacket was sheathed in protective plastic and looked like it was just returned from the cleaners.
“I had it repaired,” Marci said.
“Thanks.” He wasn't sure what else to say.
A little further down was another old friend. To just anyone it looked like any ordinary .40 caliber pistol. He’d given it a very simple nickname a few years back when it saved his life in Munich. Here too was the silencer he used to screw onto Lucky’s barrel, two other .40s and his side leathers.
There were two other pistols there. They weren't his. They were .454 caliber shiny silver five-shot revolvers with 6-inch barrels. The revolvers had decorative grips featuring lusty women naked from the hips up. One was “Maria.” The other, “Sherry.”
Interesting.
Also among the weapons was a stiletto, a side-opening flick knife with a 5½-inch blade. The shiny black plastic handle was accented with red swirls which could give someone vertigo if they stared at them long enough.
“Whose is that?” Marci asked.
The contractor shrugged.
“Yours if you want it.”
He nodded, disinterested.
His car keys were there. So was a sealed manila business envelope.
“What's that?”
“Your next job. Our first job, actually.”
He scratched his chin, concerned. She made freelance murder sound like something for sale at Macy’s. “You're really serious about it, aren't you?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the skirt go for her gun.
She pulled the .40 from under her left arm, clicked off the safety and held the deadly weapon at the ready down at her right side. “All the info’s there, along with a cell phone and some money. Your car’s outside. I’ll give you a week or a week and a half out. Should be pretty easy.”
“You are serious.”
She pointed her left index finger at him as if it were the barrel of a gun, flicked her thumb as if it were the hammer and popped her tongue off the roof of her mouth. The empty hall amplified it a hundredfold. The confident echo tapped his eardrums, rousing the sick things in his bloodstream.
He opened the envelope and examined the contents, a cover letter and pictures of two women. “You want me to walk out of here and knock off two people.”
“Well, hopefully you get a chance to give them a good scare first. I wanna know what they do when they see you. I mean, you're dead, right?” She had a hint of anticipation in her voice.
He tried to imagine what effect that would have on someone. There were numerous possibilities, from this-must-be-a-joke guffaws to killer heart attacks. “Right.” He sounded less enthusiastic.
“And it’ll give you a chance to stretch your legs. Have some fun. Didn’t say you couldn’t have fun. There’s five grand there. Little better than your usual rate. That ought to float ya.”
He dropped the folder on the table and folded his arms. “I guess you really thought this through.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And what if I say no.” He let his eyes drop to the gun in her hand. “You gonna shoot me?”
She looked down at the gun in her hand, grinned, looked up at him and turned on the charm. “You're not gonna say no.”
She was right about that too. He had a death wish to pursue and The .40 Caliber Mouse was the albatross he swore to carry to the very end. “So you’re just going to let me walk out of here?”
She made her point by throwing back the large gate blocking the entrance. It roared like a pack of demons.
“And who’s going to hold my hand?”
Marci shrugged, smiled at him with her eyes, acted as if she knew a secret and was having fun keeping it all to herself. She hit the light switch, killing the flickering dim, eclipsing the hall in darkness. The shapely silhouette used a key to unlock the double doors. But before making her exit, she spoke from the heart.
“Mazz was good at helping you get a lot of attention,” she said, with a breath of absolute honesty. “But I think, in the end, you'll find I'm a much better partner.”
He wasn't sure what to say. His emotions were mixed. Part of him wanted to yell at her. Another part of him wanted to admit she had a good point.
She left him with a smile. “See you in a week. Good luck out there.”
“Yeah.”
She clip-clopped out into the splash of white light on the parking lot.
He could hear her car turn over and roar away, leaving him there in the black empty, with only the echo of his heartbeat and a thousand unanswered questions.
Who is Marci Matejick?
That was the biggest.
What drives her? What's her deal? What am I gonna do?
His fingers itched as the invisible insects coursing through his blood marched to an angry beat. He turned back around to the arsenal she’d left him, could hardly see anything in that belly of shadows, but he reached out, ran his fingers along .40 caliber magazines and pistol grips. He picked up the sticker with the funky red and black handle. Then he dropped to the floor, propped himself up in a comfortable position and nervously twirled it through his fingers as he tried to work it all out. He stared out at the parking lot as he meditated on his next move.
He pushed his hair out of his eyes as he sat watching the sun come up. Rays of orange gold bounced off the parking lot. They were hot, angelic. It was very dramatic lighting, the kind that made westerns memorable.
The illumination revealed some cigarette butts near his feet and writing on the wall just above him. Obviously, others enjoyed sitting there to kill time too.
He started reading the scribble. It was akin to obscene bathroom graffiti. He noticed some lines were written in pen, others in black marker. He figured there was more than one author. It started with a statement:
“Everybody is a terrorist.”
That inspired the commentaries written below it:
“Not me you ass maggot. I'm an ex Army soldier.”
“So, you get paid to do it.”
“If everyone is a terrorist, then no one is a terrorist.”
The thoughts disturbed him. He wondered if he'd ever get the chance to see the faces of the insightful souls who wrote them.
Nobody came around to either wish him good morning, toss him back in his cage or boot him out the door. That also made him curious. Were they still there? Or already gone?
He was thirsty, needed a coffee. Black. Then he recalled something he said to a woman he had coffee with in Pittsburgh a few months back. She wanted to know if he thought she was crazy for wanting to have her husband killed. “You’re not crazy,” he told her. “Vengeance is in.”
It was easy to blame Marci’s antics on the craze he started up last year which turned people on to their darker instincts. Never thought it would get to this. Is the black of the heart so daft?
He wondered, as he ran his thumb along that black and red handle, then over a pea-sized shiny silver button.
Or so cunning?
He shook his head as he examined the silver stiletto, totally unsure what to think, tried to laugh, but only ended up breathing a little heavier through his nose.