The Sapphire Express (19 page)

The garbageman didn’t say anything so I continued, “Come on, man. Where is your will to survive? Haven’t you seen those little yellow flowers growing in the crack of a freeway? That’s the benchmark for survival. Just fight a little, that’s all I am asking for.”

He looked and me limply and said, “OK, we can talk if you want.”

“Good, I said. Do you want some water?”

“Yes, please.”

I got up and uncuffed the garbageman’s right hand and gave him a bottle of Poland Spring. He drank half of it and said to me, “OK, let’s talk, but first you need to tell me why I’m here.”

I looked at him and said calmly, “A group of tree huggers put a contract on you. They believe that killing an environmental criminal is a lesser sin than letting him live and pollute half the fish in West Arica to death. No offense, but I tend to agree with them.”

He looked surprised and said, “Environmentalists, huh? That is interesting. And you are the valiant contract killer who allows them to commit a murder by proxy?”

“No, not exactly. I am just a man who took the job voluntarily. Well, I do get paid, but killing people is not my real job.”

The garbageman looked at me judgmentally and asked, “What gives you the right to take my life?”

“I honestly don’t know. Something, or somebody, must give me that right, though, because I am here with a loaded Sig Sauer in my bag, and you are there in handcuffs. I have no better explanation than that, sorry.”

He sighed deeply and asked, “So you expect me to believe that you are just a regular Joe who wants to kill a man he doesn’t even know?”

“No, I am not a regular Joe. I am not a contract killer, either. I am just a weird organism with nothing to lose.”

“What happened to you, man? When did things start to go wrong?”

“Well, a shadow behind the wheel killed my daughter, and my wife died soon after. That kind of changed me, and I have transformed into something. I don’t know exactly what that something is, but the new me likes to kill assholes like you. Maybe I was brought into this world to do this, I don’t know, but here I stand and stare at you, the boogeyman himself. That’s all there is to it, I guess.”

“So I have to suffer because you weren’t able to protect your daughter?”

When he said that, I clenched the field skinner hard, but I didn’t do anything. I remained calm because getting upset at a man whom I had already decided to kill wouldn’t have been very productive. I just looked at him nonchalantly and said, “I did try to take care of her the best I could; I really did. I’m not sure if I can be blamed for some crackhead’s decision to do sixty on a suburban street.”

“You could have stayed closer to her and kept her away from the car.”

I exhaled hard and said, “Look, shitbird, I come from a family who takes good care of our kids, but we don’t keep them locked inside the house all the time. We let them run around and play with bugs and whatever. My parents brought me up that way, and I became that kind of father, too. I mean, what do you want me to do? Go and dig up my father’s corpse and tell him that he should have fucking raised me differently? Tell him that he should have taught me to always keep my children at arm’s length because a stoned maniac may appear out of nowhere and kill them with a goddamn Ford Bronco?”

The garbageman didn’t say anything.

“So, that is my story,” I said. “What is your excuse? What the fuck do you have against the fish and the ocean? You tell your men to dump toxic barrels overboard when the night falls, and then you retire to a nice house by the sea when the hard day is over. You are pissing in your own fish taco, you moron.”

He looked at me apathetically and asked, “So I should live in a landfill because I get rid of trash that nobody wants?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, you should. You shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy the ocean because you are destroying it. Don’t you fucking understand that?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Why do you have to do shit like that, garbageman, why?”

He remained quiet.

“You better tell me, right now, garbageman, or I will hurt you.”

He sighed deeply, shook his head, and said quietly, “I do it for my father.”

“Explain.”

“Well, you know, when I got my first C in the second grade, he told me that if Stalin’s doctors would perform a lobotomy on me, it would actually increase my IQ. My father has always believed that I am an idiot. He never forgot to remind me that I would die as a penniless loser. He wanted me to fail.”

“So you blame your father for your crimes?”

“No, but that is the reason I have this crazy obsession to make money and succeed at all costs. I want to prove him wrong, even if I have to take dangerous shortcuts. I also like hurting people, even if I know that it’s wrong. I am twisted; I know that. I have been in therapy for almost twenty years now, but nothing can fix me. I am like a sheet of paper that my shithead father crumpled with his ugly hands. The stupid doctors believe that they can make it smooth again, but even a child knows that it is impossible.”

“Maybe the therapy made you crazy?”

“I don’t know, but I just wanted to show my father that I am not a loser. Do you understand at all where I’m coming from?”

“No, not really. I mean, you are only successful because you are a cheater, a fraud. You don’t follow the rules. Any asshole can dump chemicals into the ocean and pollute the environment. If your father found out how you make your money, he would say that you are an even bigger loser than he thought was humanly possible. You have failed your father, garbageman. You have failed the man you should have never tried to please in the first place. He is a piece of shit, based on what you just told me.”

The garbageman didn’t say anything.

“What else did he do to you? Did he rape you? Is that the real reason why you like to torture those little girls in Freetown?”

The garbageman still didn’t say anything, and I tapped the field skinner with my right thumb and said, “Look, I told you that I don’t believe in torture, but if you don’t answer my question in the next two seconds, I swear I will scalp you.”

The garbageman started crying, and he uttered with a terrified voice, “I can’t help it. I was built that way. I am attracted to young girls, man. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to say, man?”

“So your father raped you?”

“Yes, he did. He fucking raped me, and his stinky friends did, too!”

“Is he still alive?”

The garbageman was quiet for a moment and said, “Yes, but he has terminal lung cancer.”

“Wow, there
is
some justice in this world, after all. Goddammit, that actually makes my day. Thank you for sharing that, Mr. Covington.”

The big man was sobbing now, and snot was running from his swollen nose like he had just crossed a mighty glacier. I almost felt sorry for him, but I tried to remember what he had done.

“Look. I believe that your father’s crimes against you made you the man you are today. He is the number one villain here, and I would bury him in this forest if he were healthy, OK? However, I can’t change the fact that you are a defective man and dangerous to children. I can’t change the fact that you have already raped innocent people and ruined their lives. You are like a sick dog that bites kids for no good reason. Dogs like that are put down regardless of the fact that it was their idiot owners who beat them and turned them into violent beasts. Do you understand what I’m trying to say here?”

“But I am not a dog, man. I’m a human being,” the garbageman shrieked in desperation and fresh tears started flowing down his bruised cheeks.

“You are right, you are a human being, but you are a sick human being, and sometimes sick people are way worse than sick animals. They are dangerous, cunning beasts, capable of mass misery. You must be stopped, man. I have no choice here. I would say that I’m sorry, but you already told me what you think about my apologies.”

“Call the cops, at least. I’ll go to jail rather than die in this shitty van. Please, please.”

“No. You could get away with it all. You have committed your crimes abroad, and maybe nobody would care here. They would just slap you on the wrist, and you would fly back to Africa to rape more girls, dump more toxic waste into the ocean. I can’t live with that. Killing you doesn’t give me any pleasure, but I can’t stand the idea that a man like you continues to operate with impunity.”

“Please, no, please!”

“I am sorry, even if I shouldn’t apologize to you anymore. This is my courtroom, and there is no insanity defense or mitigating circumstances here. I only look at the result of your actions. Girls have been raped, and this judge doesn’t give a damn why you did it, or what maybe drove you to do it. I don’t care if you are batshit crazy or totally sane. I only care about the victims and the fact that you have to be punished. And then there is the tree hugger contract, of course. Pacta sunt servanda, motherfucker.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said and started sobbing uncontrollably.

“Look, your problem is that you cannot control your addiction. What I mean is that there are a lot of people in this world who want things that are unattainable to them, even illegal. I, for example, would like to have sex with a different supermodel every Friday night, but, unfortunately, supermodels don’t appreciate a man like me. That is a real bummer, yeah, but I accept it as a fact of life because I am not a sick bastard like you. I don’t run around raping supermodels, do I now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you do. You kidnapped me, didn’t you?”

“Well, trust me, I don’t. And you should understand that if you were a rapist inside your head only, you could get away with it, but that’s not enough for you because you are special. So special that you can do what the hell you want, even destroy the lives of innocent children. But all that ends today, thank God.”

The garbageman didn’t say anything, and I walked to the hunting bag and pulled out the Sig Sauer. Then I said, “OK, Mr. Garbageman. Unfortunately, there was no earthquake tonight. Your time is up. You can look at me when I pull the trigger, or you can close your eyes. The choice is yours.”

The garbageman stared at the cold barrel with terror burning in his watery eyes, and he said feebly, “No, please, don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

“Sorry, it’s time.”

“No, no, kiss me first, at least. Please kiss me.”

I was somewhat surprised to hear that kind of request at that particular moment of time, and I said, “Why do you want me to kiss you?”

“I just want to feel loved before I die. Just a little bit, just a little bit.”

I thought about his words for a moment and said, “OK, I will kiss you, but you know what happens if you try to bite me?”

“I won’t try anything, I promise. Just kiss me.”

I walked to the garbageman slowly, put my lips against his mouth, and kissed him. I didn’t use my tongue, but I kissed him properly for a good ten seconds. Then I pulled my head away and asked, “Was that OK? Am I a good kisser?”

“You are fine, thank you.”

“OK,” I said and sat on the floor. Then I looked straight into the sad man’s blue eyes as the Sig Sauer roared and sent one of its small assassins on a field trip to his brain. The bullet killed the garbageman instantly, and I took a large gulp of water.
And one by one they fall like stupid toy soldiers.

I buried the beast sloppily next to the slim man and left the forest in a hurry. I didn’t even sterilize the site or cover my tracks, even if I knew that some evidence was probably left behind. I just didn’t give a shit anymore, and all I wanted to do was to get some bleach and wash my whole body with it. I wanted to forget.

The drive home was painful, and my emotions had broken the weak barrier that had kept the demons at bay. I was seriously thinking about getting the gun from the bag and shooting my head off, but then I remembered that I had a lot of money waiting for me at Johnny D’s. I had no choice than to keep on trucking.

After the agonizing drive was finally over, I opened my front door and ran into the shower as fast as I could. I poured a full bottle of shampoo on my head and tried to get rid of the poisonous ticks that were biting my skin off. Then I ate a couple of slices of rye bread and some fresh blueberries and flushed it all down with a can of cold beer. After that, I hit the sack and drifted slowly into hell.

Something truly disturbing was hounding me that night, and it tried to consume my sanity and kill me in my sleep. The devil had sent one of his best demons to fight me because I had already crushed all his other pathetic little minions under my unforgiving heels. Now that powerful little shit began injecting toxic nightmares in my head with a long syringe, and I could see the one-armed man emerging from a thick veil of smoke. He was sitting on a park bench next to the smoldering corpse of the consultant and screaming, “You lied to me, you spiny lumpsucker! You
are
the man who dresses like a Chinaman but is not really a Chinaman! You
are
the one who travels with a chained cherub near the silent lands! The one who weeps in his dreams like a GODDAMN baby! Come with me now, priest, and I will give you the fruit of the manchineel tree.”