The Sapphire Express (11 page)

Ramses looked at me with a perplexed face, and I continued, “When we are alone with our family and friends, we mock the invisible master and say that it is the stupidest thing in the whole world. And we are right. It
is
the stupidest thing in the world; a thin bubble full of fool’s air that tries to suffocate the real world—the world where all of us actually have to live every goddamn day. The whole thing is like the Emperor’s New Clothes two point oh, but we refuse to see that because the collective bullshit bubble has powerful friends, and the media tries to make people believe in it and convince us that anyone who tries to pierce the holy bubble with an opposing thought is a prejudiced, narrow-minded caveman. But do not worry, Ramses. The bubble will burst soon. It is just a corrupted offspring of the modern times and something that will die a quick death when cooler heads prevail. We are living in this posttraumatic era now where some undeniable injustices are finally being remedied and discussed, but we have overshot the target so badly that everyone is now confused and scared of his or her every word. We have become a nation of drama queens because we believe that being a drama queen is a safer option than being an honest caveman who at least understands the laws of physics and nature. It is better to be an oversensitive fake than a realistic original because honesty always carries the risk of offending someone or something, even the goddamn aliens—sorry, fine extraterrestrial beings—that live in Vega.

Ramses shrugged and said, “Well, if they ever invent a machine that can read our minds, we are all screwed.”

“Yeah. The good thing about that is that when everybody is screwed, nobody is screwed.”

“I guess. I need to take a piss, man.”

I raised the godfather to my dry lips and took a massive gulp that almost swallowed the poor thing entirely and said, “Well, enjoy the men’s room before the government replaces it with a ‘person’s’ room.”

Ramses looked at me and said in a voice that expressed reluctant defeat, “Yeah, just imagine how many different restrooms we will need at the airports in the future. I just wonder who will pay for that shit. It ain’t going to be me, that’s for damn sure.”

“Well, maybe the people who believe that progress is still progress even if things turn out worse than they were before will pay for it,” I said, but Ramses was already too far to hear me.

After about two minutes of silence, the dirty man came back from the bathroom, and I looked at my watch and said, “I gotta run, man. I have a couple of things I really need to take care of today. I’ll probably see you in a couple of days. Have my money ready, OK?”

“It won’t be ready.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there is this fourteen-day grace period when it comes to things like this. My employer wants to be sure that everything went as agreed before they pay you, if you know what I mean.”

“Fine,” I said and got up. Then I finished whatever little was left of my drink and said, “Before I go, could you bring me a couple of those bratwursts? Uncooked this time.”

“Yeah, sure, man,” Ramses said and disappeared behind the wall of colorful bottles and dusty wine glasses that had probably never been even used.

I went to the bathroom and washed my face with soap and cold water, and when I came back with a relieved look on my face, Ramses was standing behind the bar with a Ziploc bag that had two gorgeous sausages in it.

“Thank you, sir,” I said as he handed the beauties to me. Then I walked out of the bar and left Ramses at the mercy of the crazies who would soon start arriving at his door with their crumbled dollars and unsolved medical issues.

The street outside Johnny’s was still quiet, and I hopped into the Econoline with a victorious smile on my face. A clear plan had formed in my head, and I felt like I had just solved a dangerous puzzle. The entire mission was playing in my private movie theater like a well-directed thriller, and all I needed to do was to bring it to life.

The first part of the plan was to drive to Home Depot and get some material for a box that would accommodate a grown man, a big fellow with a black belt in some shit. I also needed an aluminum hand truck, some power tools, a sturdy metal chair, latex gloves, some nails, premium wood screws with serrated tips, a bag of strong nuts and bolts, plastic wrapping, and some other useful knickknacks that might come handy on a date with murder.

I had had some experience in building small wooden furniture for my own personal pleasure, and I knew that it was going to be really, really fun to start a nice little craft project again. It was just so wonderfully rewarding to see an old man turn a pile of soulless lumber into a tangible thing that was actually useful. There was something timeless and precious about that humble skill, and knowing that I was capable of doing something so beautiful and productive warmed my heart like the sweet chamomile tea that my grandmother used to make me before levodopa lost its potency and allowed her little blue porcelain teapot to fall on the teak floor and shatter in hundreds of sad little pieces.

When I arrived at the Home Depot, I walked straight to the lumber and composites department and went to work. I asked the friendly associate to help me with the big items and take them to the cashier. Then I moved on to the smaller stuff and started piling them into my shopping cart while whistling the tune from
A Fistful of Dollars
. I worked fast and efficiently, and before I knew it, all the boxes on my shopping list had been ticked. The clock of death was steadily approaching midnight.

I paid for the materials with a wad of cash and walked out of the store with a kind man in an orange apron. He was pushing a rusty platform cart while telling me about a yellow dog that had eaten his phone and expressing his dismay at the gluttonous grackles that defecated on his new Kia while he was hard at work. I told him that he shouldn’t park under the poplars, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Then we arrived at my van and loaded the material into its spacious belly.

After my successful pit stop at Home Depot was completed, I visited a secondhand clothing store called “Marty’s Closet.” I needed a deliveryman’s uniform and a brown baseball cap for my upcoming mission, and Marty’s was the place to go. The store had a vintage section where they sold postal uniforms, retro outfits, old mechanic shirts with name patches and other curious items like that. The owner, Marty, of all names, had started selling them first as just normal clothes, but when he realized that some crazy collectors were willing to pay a premium for the stuff, he had built a special department for the clothes and put an extra zero on the price tags. Marty had been very surprised to learn that the more he charged for the collector’s stuff the more people wanted to buy them.

I wasn’t a collector of overpriced crap, but my visit was still a great success, and I walked out of the store with a blue plastic bag that had a brown baseball cap and an old UPS delivery uniform neatly folded in it. The outfit was the last missing piece in the cruel puzzle, and I was ready to go home and start building something very, very special—something truly terrifying.

The Econoline took me back home safely, and I fetched two beers from the fridge and marveled for a couple of minutes at the beautiful metal chair I had gotten from the Depot. Then I unloaded the lumber, made sure that all the power tools were working properly, and started toiling away like an apprentice killer who wanted desperately to impress his master.

After a couple of hours of sweat, some blood, but no tears, the first item was ready. A magnificent oblong box had been born from the humble lumber and a handful of quality screws. The dimensions were dead-on, and I had managed to keep the box from becoming too heavy and clumsy. The suburban masterpiece was big enough to accommodate a grown man but still light enough to be moved by a child. It even had a few breathing holes for an exceptionally demanding customer, and the wooden beauty smelled fresh like a morning forest.

I jumped into the box enthusiastically and lay down on the wooden bottom. I looked at the bright sun above me and thought about the sleepy doves that had so warmly welcomed me to my new home. The world had still a lot of great beauty and peace in it, but I couldn’t help thinking that, once the lid was nailed tight on the box, the sun, the moon, and all the wonders of the world would be replaced by eternal darkness.

I got out and tested the strength of my creation by kicking its sides as hard as I could with my unforgiving boots. Then I took the hammer and tried to crack the lid, but nothing happened. The box was sturdy as hell, and it was clear that not even an aikido black belt could get out of it without a chainsaw attached to his legs. I was very pleased with my work and decided to name the box Larry because it was lean and resilient, just like my cousin Larry.

The box had turned out even better than I had envisioned, and I was optimistic about the remainder of the project. A good start was good for morale, and it boosted my confidence nicely. I was more than ready to move to the next item: a ringside seat for the doomed consultant.

I wiped the dust off the metal chair and bolted it deep to the Econoline’s floor with four zinc-plated grade-8 bolts. The process was a little more complicated than I had anticipated, but after crawling under the van a couple of times and drinking four more beers and a shot of rye, the chair was finally secured tightly to the floor. I sighed deeply, dropped the powerful German torque wrench on the grass, and wiped the sweat off my forehead.

I studied the chair carefully, and it looked so solid that I was absolutely sure that not even an enraged mountain gorilla could move the damn thing. But I still sat on it and tried my best to break it loose by thrashing in it like a furious meth addict strapped into a restraint chair at Las Vegas county jail, but the chair didn’t move, not one bit. I got up and kicked it hard with my boots until I was absolutely convinced that it was not going to budge.

After I was done with the bolting and drilling part of the night, I took a well-deserved sip of Jim Beam and attached four pairs of handcuffs to the chair—two on each armrest and two on the front legs. Then I enclosed the whole cargo space in sheets of plastic, put the hand truck and Larry in the van, and went back to the house to get my guns.

I loaded and cleaned all the small weapons I had purchased from the tiger show and placed them carefully in the hunting bag. I left the Remingtons in the bedroom closet because I figured that they were too big and clumsy for a mission that required great precision and agility. Then I walked back to the Econoline and tossed the bag next to Larry. They looked like friends that were going to get along just fine, and I closed the door and took another sip of Mr. Beam. The Econoline was ready. It wasn’t a cargo van anymore. It was a kill room on four wheels.

I went back inside and rested in my beautiful bedroom for a couple of hours. Then I read some news online and saw that some rich guy had donated $200 million to cancer research. He was a cancer survivor himself, and he wanted to make sure that the doctors fighting the deadly disease had adequate weapons at their disposal. I thought that he was a very admirable man but couldn’t stop wondering why people always seemed to donate money to cancer research after they had gotten the disease themselves. I wanted to see someone donate money already before they got sick. That would have been something truly astonishing, but I, of course, still appreciated the $200-million man greatly because he had helped the cancer patients much more than I ever could. That was for damn sure.

I spent the rest of the evening strategizing and thinking about my upcoming mission. I went through the plan in my head for hundreds of times and double-checked that everything was absolutely perfect. Then I proceeded with the final task of the night and printed two fake dealer plates, encased them in plastic, and attached the flimsy bastards onto the Econoline. I wanted to make sure that my real license plates weren’t associated with the wicked events that were about to take place, and dealer plates were so common in my city that it was absolutely guaranteed that nobody, including the police, would pay any attention to them whatsoever.

After I was done with the lethal preparations, I decided to get a sandwich from a joint called Chicken in a Cannon. It was a superior fast-food restaurant that served the best goddamn chicken sandwiches in the entire western hemisphere. I absolutely loved the place, and the best thing was that their closest franchise was only a couple of miles from my new house. In fact, it was so close that I decided to walk there and ventilate my stuffy head in the process. I also didn’t want to put any unnecessary miles on the Econoline now that it had been prepped for murder. I was a risk taker, but I wasn’t an idiot.

The Chicken in a Cannon was half-empty, and my Chicken Supreme and a large Dr. Pepper arrived quickly. I thanked the friendly cashier and sat at a table next to a giant yellow chicken that was stuffed inside a massive cannon, ready to be catapulted into the air. Then I started eating the Chicken Supreme with a refined smile on my face. Ah, how I savored the tenderness of that perfect chicken breast. Ah, the flawlessness of an impeccable sandwich that had changed so many lives and provided so many children with warm, lifelong memories. Ah, how evident it was that the magnificent creation had been prepared with tender love and respect for the mighty fowl and the ones who would chew it to pieces with their eager teeth. The sandwich was like a work of precious art that didn’t just nourish my eyes—it nourished my whole body—and in that carnal gallery full of fried chicken breasts and friendly cashiers in funny hats, satisfaction was absolutely 100 percent guaranteed.