Deadly Treatment (8 page)

A
side from arson, Vince and Scott shared one other illegal skill, auto theft. To say they were good at boosting cars would be like saying America had a minor weight problem. Vince was the better of the two, but both saw LA as one huge car showroom. After their individual scopes of the job, Vince and Scott got together and decided that since the majority of the combustible material they needed was already inside the office, trunk space wasn’t their biggest concern, so they picked up a dark blue Subaru for the night’s task. Should the need for a fast getaway arise, the Subaru offered both speed and — being a 4-wheel-drive — great cornering. It was also a popular car and, therefore, would easily blend into the background when necessary.

It was just after two in the morning when they gently rolled, headlights off, into the alley at the rear of the job. They brought the car to rest with the driver’s side snugly against the wall and directly under the office’s air conditioning grill. Vince switched off the engine; Scott, who was riding shotgun, quickly jumped out with an electric screwdriver in his hand; it was fully charged and ready to go. With his seatbelt on and child locks preventing any form of escape, Joshua watched from the back seat as Scott jumped onto the car’s roof and got into position. Penned in the car by the office’s back wall, Vince’s job was to shine the torch through the door’s open window, illuminating the grill so his partner could unscrew the panel. After a quick look up and down the alley to make sure the coast was clear, Scott began.

The screws and panel came off easily, and Scott laid them silently on to the car’s roof. He tapped twice on the windscreen and Vince slid over to the passenger side, got out of the car, and like a chauffeur, opened Joshua’s door. As Joshua got out of the car, Vince grabbed his shoulder.

‘You know what’s gonna happen to your mother if you don’t do this right, don’t you kid?’ he said menacingly.

Not responding, Joshua pulled away from his grasp and hopped onto the hood of the Subaru.

He climbed to the roof of the car and joined Scott who then checked him over to make sure there was no loose clothing or anything to catch or restrict his movements.

Satisfied that everything was fine, Scott clipped a fanny pack onto Joshua and tied one end of a rope to his waist. ‘Everything will be fine; just do as we practiced, Scott said, and then lifted him up to the mouth of the vent.

It was a tight fit. Joshua slid head first into the stainless duct and inched his way along. It was pitch black, but it didn’t matter, he didn’t need to see where he was going, after all there was only one way to go. Using outstretched arms to feel his way and pull himself forward, it only took a few minutes to get to his destination — the metal lattice grill that pointed directly toward the floor of the office’s kitchen. Joshua slipped his fingers inside the holes, and the grill popped out. Unable to keep hold of it, the grill fell
downwards; crashing heavily onto the table below. Joshua immediately shrank back into the AC duct and tried to reverse his way along the narrow stainless steel corridor.

‘Don’t panic — it’s all okay,’ Scott whispered. ‘Carry on, no one heard you, just don’t do that again.’ His voice had a sprinkle of humour in it; there was only one grill.

Joshua wormed his way forward and stuck his head down through the hole where the grill had been. Slowly, he let his eyes run around the room in search of any sign of life; only the tiny red and green lights from various electrical devices broke the darkness. Once he was satisfied there was no impending danger, as he’d been instructed, he pulled twice on the rope to signal he was going in.

With the rope taut, Joshua wriggled his shoulders through the hole and gravity did the rest; the rope around his waist controlled his descent towards the table top the grill had crashed onto. He landed softly and gave another couple of tugs on the rope to signal his arrival; immediately the rope went loose.

Joshua let his legs dangle from the table as he unzipped his fanny pack and rooted around for a flashlight. As he removed it from the pouch, he flicked it on and started to run the beam around the room to get his bearings. He had landed facing the main office area with his back to the emergency exit and the wall of paper that was soon to be ignited. The room was a jumbled mess of desks and cabinets. The desks faced the main entrance as if eagerly awaiting any form of visitor, and almost all the filing cabinet drawers were open. Joshua lowered the beam of light downwards as it made its journey towards the side wall and on to its intended use to illuminate his way to the pile of paper at the rear exit.

At first his brain didn’t compute what the light had flashed over as it cut through the darkness. It was only after he turned to face the kitchen area that the tiny bits of information grouped together in his brain to form an image of what was hidden under one of the desks — the form of a man.

Fully expecting the man to burst from under the desk and grab him, Joshua literally threw himself off the table and cowered behind it, snapping off the light as he went. For what seemed like an age, he stayed there unmoving and holding his breath; nobody came. Surely it was a ruse; the man was obviously waiting for Joshua to show himself again; he was bound to be closer, poised, and ready. Joshua’s heart pounded loudly in his ears, but he still held his breath and didn’t dare move. Finally, with his lungs fit to burst, he exhaled and dove prostrate to the ground, scooping in another lung full of air as he went. Still no one grabbed him.

Maybe he was mistaken; it must have been a trick of the light, or even his mind making an idiot out of him. If there was someone there, he would have been caught by now — wouldn’t he? Curiosity overtook his fear, and with his pulse almost back to normal, Joshua slowly got up, flicked the flashlight back on and tentatively shone it back towards the underside of the desk.

The curled up body of a frail, bald man was floodlit by the beam, and again fear dropped its enveloping cape over Joshua. Even though his legs went weak, this time he didn’t run and hide; he let the image of the man sink in; he wanted him to make the first move so he could zag to the man’s zig. But the man remained still; his unblinking eyes just stared back along the beam of light.

Carefully Joshua edged his way towards the man; although unsure whether it was a trap, he kept the light shining directly on the man’s face just in case. Suddenly, the man’s mouth dropped open and Joshua almost pissed his pants with fright.

‘Water,’ the man said, his voice faint and raspy.

In spite of his racing pulse, Joshua kept saying
I’m okay, I’m okay
in his head as he looked over at the broken man whose frailty began to bolster his confidence.

With his fear almost gone, Joshua obediently made his way to the kitchen. Using the flashlight, he found the faucet and a cup, which he half-filled with water and rushed back to the man, held the vessel up to his mouth, and helped him to take a drink.

‘What’s going on down there?’ Came a labored whisper from the AC duct above. Joshua ignored the question and chose instead to concentrate on helping the man under the desk. The man took a few gulps of water and began to cough and wheeze. Joshua patted him on the back until the coughing fit subsided — mimicking something his mother would have done if he been doing the coughing.

Joshua replaced the cup in his hand with the flashlight and began to examine the man in front of him. The first thing he noticed was that the man had no hair at all on his face or head. Nothing, no beard or moustache, and strangely, no eyebrows — he looked like a bright white bowling ball. The other thing Joshua noted was how skinny the man was, almost as though someone had just stretched some plastic food wrap over his skull and sprayed it white. Images of malnourished Africans or AIDs victims filled his head and he shrank back a little.

‘Wait — don’t go,’ the man forced out.

‘I wasn’t — I …’ Joshua couldn’t come up with a suitable explanation for his retreat, so left his sentence hanging.

‘I need to tell you something. Come closer.’ The man struggled to speak.

Joshua took a breath and reluctantly leaned forward.

‘It’s all true,’ he whispered, ‘Rife, Coley, and many more. It’s all true,’ he wheezed.

Joshua had no idea what the man was talking about.

‘I have the proof too — in my pocket.’ The man tried to lift his hands to his breast pocket, but he was too weak. Joshua reached over and undid the button, fumbled inside, and came out with a tiny flash drive.

‘It’s all on there — you have to tell people. You, you need to let everyone know.’ The man’s words were getting slower and weaker. ‘Promise me!’ The man stared at Joshua.

‘I promise,’  Joshua replied as the man’s breathing wheezed one last time, and then ceased as he slumped down dead.

Joshua panicked; he had no idea what to do. On one hand, a stranger had died right in front of him making him promise to tell the world about who knows what — but on the other hand, his mother’s life depended on him carrying out the task the two guys on the other end of the rope wanted him to do. Fear and confusion paralyzed the young boy.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ came the voice from the duct above.

Startled, Joshua tugged twice on the rope and was immediately dragged back towards the table. As the rope lifted him off the ground back towards the AC duct, Joshua shone the flashlight one last time on the dead bald man.

‘All done?’ Scott asked as he greeted him at the end of the duct.

‘No, I couldn’t. There was a man...’

‘What do you mean you haven’t done it? Fuck!’ Scott was holding back his anger. ‘Get down there to the car, quickly — and don’t speak till I tell you to.’

Joshua jumped back down from the car’s roof and slipped into the back seat while Scott put the outside grill back in place.

‘All good?’ Vince asked.

Joshua just looked to the floor.

‘I asked you a question,’ Vince said menacingly.

Joshua remained silent

‘Listen to me, you little shit; when I ask you a question, I...’

Scott jumped into the car and yelled, ‘Drive!’

They drove silently for several blocks. Vince still had no idea what was going on, and Scott was trying to let his anger dissipate before questioning Joshua — and before the inevitable eruption from Vince when he found out that the job hadn’t been done.

Scott turned to look at Joshua in the back seat. ‘Can you please tell me what went on in there?’ Scott’s voice was calm.

‘I couldn’t do it; there was a man there.’

‘You what!’ Vince yelled and screeched the car to a halt.

‘Vince, let me handle this. You just keep driving.’

‘Told you he would fuck it up; and I told him what would happen if he didn’t do it,’ Vince spat angrily, and then set his own course towards Joshua’s house, driving faster than before.

‘Joshua, look at me. What do you mean there was a man there?’

‘That’s what I said. There was a bald man there hiding under the desk. I spoke to him and he died.’

‘What a load of bullshit,’ Vince fumed.

‘I told you I’d handle this, Vince,’ Scott said tersely.

‘Yeah, well the kid’s making a fool out of you.’

Scott let the comment go and went back to Joshua.

‘A bald man you say, and he died right in front of you?’

‘It’s true, I swear. He said something about Rife and Coley, and that I had to promise to tell people about...’

The look of fear in Joshua’s eyes had actually convinced Scott that he was telling the truth.

‘You don’t really believe him, do you? Don’t you get it? The kid’s lying – he just bottled it,’ Vince butted in,
angrily stepping on the gas.

‘Where are you heading?’ Scott asked.

‘Boy’s gotta learn that when you say you’re gonna do something, you do it. And I told him what I was gonna do if he didn’t do this job for us.’

‘No!’ Joshua cried from the back seat. He’d just realized where they were heading. ‘I was going to do it. There was the man there...’

‘Yeah, yeah. Dead guy stopped you from doing it. Couldn’t you have come up with a better story?’ Vince said sarcastically.

‘It’s true, he gave me this flash drive to prove it,’ Joshua protested.