The Intern's Handbook: A Thriller (12 page)

He handed me two thick plastic bags and a roll of duct tape. I
just stood there, feeling as if the weight of this moment was going to crush my small body like an insect. That was my first experience with duality. I completely understood the situation, yet it simultaneously felt utterly confusing to me. I knew that killing them meant justice, freedom, and a shitload of catharsis for everything they had done to me. Even
half
of what they had done was reason enough. But despite my bloodlust and lack of empathy, there was still a morsel of innocence deep inside me that wanted to run from there as fast as my legs could carry me.

You’ve heard of attempted suicide survivors who’ve jumped off bridges and had second thoughts about dying as they plummeted to the water below? This was me. I jumped. I was falling. But I wasn’t having second thoughts because I didn’t want to go through with it and kill them. I was having them because
I did.
To this day, I have never felt so compelled to do anything. And that scared the shit out of me. I wanted their blood on my hands, yet somehow I knew that it would be my blood too. What was left of the child that still liked to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle, run after the ice cream truck, and yearn for a normal life would be dead. And I would be his killer.

So I did what any eight-year-old would do when faced with an earth-shattering moral dilemma: I froze like a deer in the headlights. As I stood there with the hair on the back of my neck standing up and every muscle tense to the point of exploding, Diablito tried to talk me off the ledge.

“
Hermanito
. Maybe you’re not ready, bro. Go in the other room. I’ll take care of this.”

He tried to take back the bags and duct tape. Then, like the man falling from the bridge, I hit the water at 120 miles an hour.

“No.”

“Think you can handle it?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead. I got your back.”

As I walked up to them, I felt the black rage surge behind my eyes. Mickey looked at me, frozen with dumb animal fear, and I raised the bag. As I covered his head, I conjured up all of the bad memories of the things he did to me. And that was like pouring gas on a fire. Next thing I knew, I was wrapping duct tape tightly around his neck. Then I was doing the same to Mallory. As they struggled to breathe, suffocating in agony, Diablito touched my shoulder.

“
Vámonos,”
he whispered.

“No. Wait.”

I wanted to be sure they were dead. So I watched their final breaths and watched their bodies go limp. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a little kid crying. For a long time I thought it was someone in one of the other apartments, but now I know it was me. I was that far from truly feeling anything anymore.

Then I turned to Diablito and nodded that I was ready. And we left. A couple of weeks later, the police picked me up coming out of the flophouse hotel I was hiding in. One of the neighbors had seen Diablito and me leave the apartment the night of the murders. Since I lived there, they compared the fingerprints on the few toys I had stolen and hidden under my bed to the ones on the plastic bags. It was an open-and-shut, but the police and DA wouldn’t accept the fact that an eight-year-old had done such a heinous thing. They wanted to blame it all on Diablito and offered to drop the charges on me from murder one to second degree manslaughter if I gave him up. But I’m proud to say I never dimed on him. Not because of some honor code, but because I wanted to take full responsibility for my actions. It was the only thing I felt I had ever done that had made my mark on the world, and there was no way I was going to give it up. So they sent me up to juvie and threw away the key.

I was there three and a half years until Bob came to visit me on my twelfth birthday. Our conversation was short and sweet. Bob was
going to become my guardian and enter me into a special program for “gifted children.” Or I could stay there until I turned eighteen and they transferred me to Folsom Prison, where I would, more than likely, remain for the rest of my life. When Bob explained to me what I would be doing, it didn’t faze me in the least. Because I was uncomfortably numb. I had no emotional attachment to life. That’s why I’m here today and Alice is a not-so-gentle reminder that being attached to anyone is the death of purity for people like us. We are in our own dark Eden where the snake is not selling the Tree of Knowledge. He is selling love, and if you take a bite of that apple, you will go the way of Abel when this is clearly the land of Cain.

That night I dream about Eva. I walk into her room. It’s dark but I can hear her giggling on her bed. She’s telling me to take my clothes off and join her. I do. I am smiling, happy to see that she is really alive. I tell her I thought she was dead and she giggles again.

“Get in bed, silly.”

I get in. She holds my hands, still giggling. I hear the sound of a police car siren outside. As it comes to a screeching halt in front of Eva’s building, its police lights shower the room with bright colors—like a trippy bubble gum machine. I go to kiss her and the lights sweep across her face. She is a rotting corpse. She giggles when she sees my look of horror.

“Don’t you want to kiss me, John?”

Her eyes are completely black. She comes at me and I am trying to scream but nothing comes out of my mouth.

“Your mother says hello.”

I wake up. It’s 5:00
A.M.
Bob is sitting in a chair across from me.

“You looked like one of those dogs dreaming that you’re chasing something. Your hands were moving like paws digging in the earth. What was the nightmare?”

“Same old same old. Rotting corpses torturing me from the grave.”

“Anyone I know?”

That question is so loaded, if it were a gun, it would have blown off half my skull. I look at him and keep my gaze measured but the bile of hatred rises up in my throat and makes me cough.

“You worry too much.” He smiles.

“What’s the word on Hartman?”

“I have some good news and some good news. The good news is that we’ve confirmed Mr. Bendini is our mark. The other good news is that it appears Hartman wasn’t working directly for Bendini.”

“Customer?”

“Looks that way.”

“How you like the intel?”

“I’m buying it. Got it from a great source—Hartman’s real homosexual lover.”

“I thought that was just part of your cover story.”

“It was. Just dumb luck that it’s true. Guy told us Hartman’s connected with a mob family upstate. They paid a guy off to get him placed there, then whacked the guy after Hartman was hired. I guess they wanted to babysit their golden goose and didn’t have much confidence in Bendini’s people.”

“Explains the fact that he’s a pro.”

“Yeah. I guess he was some military contractor type before this. Shooting ragheads that get too close to oil wells and whatnot. Dumbass probably didn’t know what hit him when he met you.”

“Bendini’s paranoia has to be at an all-time high,” I muse, relieved that the fucking Mickey Spillane bullshit is over and I can concentrate on my real job.

“That’s why we had to take care of this very well.”

“What’re you selling the street?”

“Murder-suicide,” Bob says with pride. “Married closet homo
whacks Hartman because he’s scared. Hartman has been threatening to out him so he can work the guy for money, et cetera.”

“But when he sees Hartman dead it’s too much for him. So he swallows the gun because swallowing is what got him into this mess in the first place. Two dead cowboys roll down
Brokeback Mountain
. Cops can’t wait to get ’em off the books,” I say absently. “Sounds pretty clean.”

“Squeaky. Bendini will buy it. Too weird not to.”

“So how you think he made me?” I call attention to the elephant in the room.

“He was a pro. Takes one to know one.”

“What now?” I inquire very gently.

“What now is we’re prepping your execution scenario as we speak. You’ll be able to take care of business in a couple of days. You up for a wild west show?”

“My spurs are jingling and jangling.”

When I walk out into the morning sun, the glow of my reprieve is quickly snuffed out by the realization of what I have to do about Alice. I don’t want to do it, but this is insect culture, and one of us will eventually have to be eaten to restore order. She may not be suspicious of Hartman’s death, but sooner or later something will throw my scent her way and Bob will end up killing us both. So later that day I call Alice and tell her I want to have dinner with her on Friday night. Just the two of us. I tell her I’ve been missing her and I really need some alone time with her. I can almost feel the heat from her blushing cheeks. I can hear the excitement in her voice. She’s in love with me and she thinks I’m in love with her. She trusts me. And I’m going to take her life.

United States Department of Justice

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Washington, D.C. 20535

Location: Alice (censored) Residence/Bedroom, East Village, Manhattan

Subjects: John Lago and Alice (censored).