The Goodbye Man (8 page)

When the price you paid is too high, you should take your money back.

We park both vans
illegally in front of the building where I live and where Pavel runs his business, the same place where all the sinister filth of the area hides from the world.

If I come with muscle, then it’s generally not a social call and I see the street rats scurry away to warn those inside of my arrival. It won’t matter, I am here to collect and I won’t be leaving without him - and
her.
I can feel the tightening of every muscle in my body, the burning that every pulse of my heart pushes through my veins, setting my anger on fire. That trigger that sets my insanity free has been pulled. I had this same feeling when I saw Marta in a dumpster from my bedroom window above. It was the first and last message from the Russian, and now I am going to reply. I can see the lady I told Mateo to call, hovering on the pavement like the black plague that infests these streets hanging in the air we breathe. Her Cheshire grin and pink talons are the image you would see in nightmares. Only here nightmares walk the streets and snatch up dreamers to eat alive every day. Don’t close your eyes to dream here, because it isn’t always me that will come to get you.

The stench of piss and drugs consumes me with each step I take up the stairs; death hangs in the air here. It is a constant, nothing can cleanse these streets. The place should be razed to the ground and the rubble burned. It festers with all that is wrong with the world. I step over a wasted junkie that has passed out and fallen down; she’s broken some bones or hit her head. I don’t stop to see, because I do not care. The man behind me taps her with his boot to see if she moves and continues on when she doesn’t. The filthy walls close in on us as the light disappears the higher up we go, shadows where ghastly things lurk are all that you can see in here now.

I see a rat scurry away as I disturb its feast, the constant scuffle of the vermin the soundtrack to the horror movie that is lived here. The corridor leading to the apartment where he squats is quiet, those with any desire to live have retreated behind closed doors. If you don’t see what happens, no one can ask you questions; self-preservation is key in these parts. No one ever sees or hears anything - ever.

I pound on his door with my fist. “Pavel, you cunt! Open this door.” I keep banging as I can hear footsteps shuffling around inside. We are too high up for a window escape, and the fire escape no longer exists since it rusted and fell apart a long time ago. They have nowhere to go, the only way out is through me. “If I open this door, you will be fucking sorry!” I yell louder, stepping aside so the Hulk beside me can break the door down if I need him to. Before we have to, one of the men I threatened earlier opens the door and holds his hand up, letting me know he won’t be a problem. I point to the floor behind me in the passage. “Sit and don’t do anything fucking stupid.” He doesn’t resist. I guess he thinks he will live if he doesn’t; stupid people just shouldn’t think at all. “Where is he?” I ask him.

“В спине, на спине.” He answers me in Russian.

“Do I look Russian, you fuck?” I kick him in the chest.

“At back, at back.” He gurgles, grabbing his chest with his dirty hands.

I step inside the hovel, where there are women passed out on the floor. A broken chair rests in a corner where the other dog stands watching them. The smell of meth is thick in the air and the used syringes and needles litter the space, along with homemade pipes and broken light bulbs. The man guarding the women holds his hands up but I shoot him anyway. The gunshot sets off a commotion and they all go scrambling, trying to escape. My men line them up against the wall outside like prisoners. They are prisoners to their own fates, but I don’t offer them freedom, only another hell. As I step closer to the back of the apartment where the door I opened earlier is closed, I smell it. A smell that I cannot erase from my mind, my body or my clothing. The smell of burning flesh and hair is filtering through the walls and the sanity I was clinging too is crumbled into ruins and the madman beneath it escapes. There are no screams, just the cackle of his evil laughter as I nod for my men to open the door. He is not good enough for a bullet, and he will be coming with me instead. His goodbye will not be sweet or swift.

He is too high to fight or even flee. He just rolls onto his back laughing like a wild hyena, the cackles of evil not stopping as he is dragged outside. I cannot see her clearly in the dark, her unmoving frame lying on a filthy comforter that he just set alight. I step through the fire that is beginning to come alive and lift her into my arms, she feels dead. I am too late, I have made a terrible mistake. “Put that out,” I yell at my helper, as I don’t need my home to go up in flames too. When the flames are doused, we begin our descent down to the waiting cars. He still cackles as they kick him, the whores lining the wall spitting on him as we pass. The cat lady is waiting like a lion to take her prey. I nod at her and a new agreement is made without the need for words or paper.

By the time we get to the car, Pavel is no longer conscious, and his incessant cackling has stopped. He, his two dead henchmen, and the body of the girl on the stairs are loaded into the black van. I lay her body down gently on the seat of my van, clipping a seatbelt over her to keep her from flying around as we drive. I call Mateo as I stalk around to the driver’s door and he answers as I start the engine. “Is the doctor there yet, you shit?” I snap at him, in no mood for any shit.

“She is here. I did the shopping and I had the room cleaned.” He sighs loudly. “What is this all about, Caesar? You are acting like a madman today.”

“It’s about fixing something that I broke. Don’t ask stupid questions, boy. I am coming in the truck entrance. I have some waste that needs disposing of.” I hang up.

I am holding my breath as long as I can so I don’t have to smell her burnt skin, and when I do dare to take one, it’s suffocating. The smell chokes me, and when I glance at her unmoving body, something horrible happens to me.
I feel sorry for her. I want to save her. I need her to live, I am not ready to say goodbye when I haven’t even said hello.

The heat in the building is radiating out from it as we park, the incinerators burning at the highest heat. The air is like a mirage as they open the doors and the hot air escapes with a whooshing sound. The two men who came with me get out of the van and look to me for instructions. “The dead ones in burner two, the Russian you can tie to a chair in the cold storage room. Let’s get those drugs he loves so much out of his system.” I move to open the door so I can lift her out of my vehicle. As I hold onto her limp body, I hear a breathy sound; she is still in there.
“This is not your goodbye, mi amor, not yet. Come on.”
 I whisper softly to her as I carry her through the heat of the cavernous space and to the lift that goes up to the floors above us. She is dead weight in my arms and as I cling to her small body. I want her to be alive. She smells of burnt skin and filth and I wish I could wash it all away. There is a heavy sadness in me when I look at her dangling body in my arms.

As the industrial metal doors slide closed and I cling to her skeletal frame, my stomach sinks, and not from the lift moving, but from a guilt so deep in me that I didn’t even know it was there. It’s churning within the depths of the past I had buried with Marta, but I was a fool to think I could just forget. I close my eyes and try to wipe it away, but it won’t go this time. Now I have touched what I sold. I cannot let it go and it’s going to fucking kill me. I used her as a trading chip to get others to save lives, now maybe I can save her. As the lift shudders to a metal grinding halt, the heavy doors rasp open and I am met by Mateo and the doctor. My grip tightens a little as this fierce need to protect her takes over me. I don’t know what drives me, but I carry her straight through the room where they all lie waiting and into the theater. I just know she needs a lot of help. I lay her down and turn to the two of them, Mateo is stopped at the doors. He never comes in here. It freaks him out - but fucking corpses is okay? The doctor’s eyes are bulging they are so wide as she looks at the body I have laid out in front of her. “Save her, no matter what. You fucking save her.” I turn and walk away because if she can’t, I will surely die too.

As I step back out, Mateo asks me, “Who is that, Caesar? We are not equipped to save lives here, we take them.” My calm facade turns into a malicious rage as I slap the boy right across his face.
Stop talking. You’re killing me; I can’t handle her and a noise, it’s just too much.

“She is none of your fucking business and you better pray they save her or I might become an even bigger monster than I already am, Mat. Do - Not - Push - ME!” I poke him in the chest as I speak, and he looks afraid of me. I am never anything but calm, calm works, anger doesn’t.

“Caesar, she looks dead already,” he says softly, and almost sad. His whispered tone causes my body to rebel and I feel myself getting hard, the unwanted physical response making me angry.

“You don’t think I fucking know that, perra? Huh? I just pulled her from a bed that Pavel set on fire.” I turn and storm through the beds and the incessant beeping of monitors to escape myself, but I am not going anywhere. Except to kill that fucker.

Sticks and stones and broken bones, but only the fires of hell can harm me.

Four of my doctors,
a plastic surgeon who bought his kidney from me and what seemed like too many hours later, she is alive. I watched them work through the glass window in the door. I saw blood everywhere and I watched as they hung bag after bag of the blood we have stored here. They set her broken bones and cleaned the wounds in her skin. The plastics man cleaned and treated her burnt sex, and I could see him gagging as he saw what had been done. His pallor changed to grey and he shook his head with frustration as he worked. The Polish doctor kept looking up to meet my eyes through the glass, the thick pane making everything a little hazy and unreal. But it is real, for the first time since I opened this place we are saving someone in here and not killing them. I don’t want to carry her body to the blazing fires below me. I want her to open her eyes so I can look into them. She is different from the others that have come and gone from here; she means something to me. I stood until my feet ached and my mind numbed once again, the dull pins and needles feeling that I can’t get rid of. The beeping from inside and outside the doors is all I can hear. It doesn’t stop, each one beeping at a different rhythm, making a cacophony of almost-life. The beeping silences the whispers and brings me a little bit of peace.

When I see the doctors walking away, taking off their gloves and caps, the plastic surgeon wipes the sweat off his brow and shakes his head a little as his eyes look at the floor and not me. When the Polish doctor looks up and offers me a very small, sad nod, I know she is alive. I can breathe, so I turn and leave. She will go into the isolation recovery room next to the theater and wait there while she recovers. Mateo approaches me as I am walking out. “Caesar, the Russian is going fucking crazy. What must I do with him?” he asks me, running his hand through his hair and letting out a sigh. There is not normally any chaos here.

“Nothing. I will deal with him now. You stay and watch her. Watch, Mateo. Just watch.” The threat in my voice is clear as I leave him to deal with Pavel, who is no doubt in the throes of withdrawal and in some serious pain after the beating he got earlier. You see when you poison your body with that shit your strength is only there when it is. I want him weak and pathetic and begging to die. The two men who went with me to fetch the cockroach from his hole are waiting outside the door. I can hear his wailing from down the passage and it makes me smile. I don’t smile often.

There have been times in the past, days long gone by, when I was cementing my place in this decaying world that we had to do things like this. The calm only came after a long storm. “You have what we need?” I ask Hugo, although we all call him Hulk because of his sheer size. He nods. His thick neck is one with his head and I am sure he could crush a skull with his hands if need be. “Everything, boss. Just waiting for you.”

“Is he suffering?” My smile widens at the idea of him in agony. “Let’s go. I don’t have all day for this.” As much as I would love to drag his torment out forever, I want to get back to her. The metal door squeaks on its hinges as we open the cold store, where we house the pints and pints of blood that we sell to hospitals with less than stellar reputations and illegal abortion clinics to fix their mistakes. I sit down in the chair the Hulk has placed in the corner for me and light a smoke. I shouldn’t smoke in here but I need one too badly to care. Hugo pulls a small medical cart in front of Pavel and uncovers the tools of his trade. He is well-rehearsed in torture and enjoys it a little too much. The cigar cutter, pliers, scalpel and two inch wide metal pipe glint with the overhead lights. It only takes one look for him to start to beg and apologize. I don’t want him to beg to live. I
need
him to beg me to
die
. Not all goodbyes are sweet and his will be anything but. “Get started, I am in a hurry.” I let them know I am ready to watch the show. I don’t hurt people. I am a voyeur of pain, I will hit you or kill you if I
have to
, but I don’t like to. I drag the silent peace of my cigarette into my lungs and expel the smoke into the air as the show begins. His senses are heightened by his withdrawal and the pain is magnified a million times; his wild thrashing as his fingers are cut off one by one is beautiful.

He fights for longer than I thought he would, and when Hugo lifts up the pipe and looks at me for confirmation, I nod at him and stand up. He unties the bleeding mess of a man and lays him face down on the floor, where he tries to worm away but my boot on his back keeps him from getting too far.

“You let them rape her? You let them hurt her?
You hurt her.
She wasn’t yours to hurt, was she, Pavel? Now my friend, Hulk here, and his pipe are going to rape you until you beg me to kill you.” His screams could shatter glass as the pipe is shoved merciless into his ass.
 He deserves more.
Three, three strokes of the pipe tearing him apart and his begging is enough for me. I lift his almost lifeless, but still alive body, over my shoulder and carry him to the lift; it’s time to go to hell Russian. He still moans and tries to fight, but it’s futile. The heat from the incinerators can be felt as the doors slide open and the noise of the raging fires makes a deafening lullaby. I stand in front of the small metal door to hell and push the button to open it. I am met by the scorching heat and I lift his head so he can see the flames. “Time to go to hell, Pavel. You made a very big mistake crossing me.” He starts to buck and thrash the little he can still move as I heave him onto the metal slide that takes him straight into the fire and hopefully hell. I can hear the crackling of his skin as it is set alight, and the smell of burning hair and flesh fills my lungs, so I leave. I need quiet, this day has been nothing but noise.

I turn around to meet the horror-filled eyes of Juan. “What are you doing down here, boy? You shouldn’t be here!” I boom at him as he turns and runs faster than an Olympic athlete. I am not in the mood to deal with him. Mateo needs to get a handle on things. I go to find him so he can put the boy away.