The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel (9 page)

“You didn’t!”

“I did. And I also attached a few of the emails you’ve sent me over the years.”

“Which ones?”

“Let me see, in one you said that the day Carol from accounting wore a tank top to the staff volleyball game was the best day of your life.”

“That’s not so bad. There’s no way they would fire me for that,” Mason said.

“In another one you wrote that our upper management is filled with a bunch of lazy miscreants who couldn’t work a register at McDonald’s. You also said the only way to take care of them would be to give each and every one of them an enema with a garden hose.”

“I never wrote that.”

“Oh yes you did. March fifteenth. Three years ago. The day you got passed over for a promotion for Chad’s job. I saved the email in a special folder for just such an occasion.”

“You son of a bitch! This is ten times worse than anything I ever did.”

Roland pumped his fist in the air, victorious.

“That may be true. But much like Rocky, I didn’t draw first blood.”

“That’s Rambo, you idiot.”

Roland stopped in front of the bank. “What?”

“Rambo was the one in
First Blood
. Rocky was in
Rocky
.”

“Fascinating,” Roland said. “Perhaps you can get a new job as a professional movie buff. Now listen, I have some really important things to do. But have a great day and a great life and take the time to enjoy yourself. You deserve it.”

Roland hung up the phone and entered the bank. He removed his jeans from the safety deposit box and carried them all the way across town to the local lottery office. With confidence, he told the woman behind the counter that he’d just won the lottery. She seemed genuinely excited for him and called out to her supervisor. Very carefully, in full view of three lottery officials, Roland pulled the ticket from the back pocket of his jeans and couldn’t believe his eyes. His entire world — the fictional one he’d built up in his mind in which he was a jet-setting vagabond playboy with two girls on either arm and an arsenal of rock star friends — came crashing down to painful reality.

The white ticket, smudged with a little plum juice, contained the numbers
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
.

twelve

Conrad knocked on the door. On the other side, a motion sensor flashed a red light to alert Billy Bones that he had visitors. Conrad slammed his fist against the door a second time. When there was no answer, he and Alfred both frowned. Their stone deaf associate Bones might merely have passed out in his Barcalounger. But at Shady Oaks Park, where any nap in front of the television could be your last, an unanswered knock at Bones’ door more likely meant one of three things:
(1)
he’d keeled over and was lying in a puddle of drool on the linoleum floor,
(2)
he’d finally cornered the young floor nurse and was blissfully chasing her around his room or
(3)
he’d grown so delirious he’d forgotten how to use the doorknob.

“Bones!” Conrad yelled. “Get a move on, old chap.”

Silence filled the hall. Conrad twirled the ends of his moustache with his gloved hand while Alfred picked at a liver spot on top of his head.

“Perhaps we’ll be completing the mission ourselves,” Conrad whispered under his breath.

“Gentlemen,” a voice called from down the hall. “Gentlemen, may I help you?”

The voice came from the retirement home director, one Abraham Arnold, formerly executive administrator of the esteemed Cottage Estates. At fifty-one years of age — decades younger than Conrad and his associates — Abraham was all business. He ushered the residents around like cattle and chased down the sick and decrepit the way a shady lawyer chases ambulances. Abraham saw each resident who died as yet another room he could rent at a higher rate. And the residents knew it. They nicknamed him the Grinning Reaper, in part because of his appearance — his lofty height, his far-too-large head that swiveled as if on a pendulum, and his hunched over, Lurch-like demeanor — but more for the ominous way he stood beside the gurneys of recently deceased seniors with barely an effort made to conceal his gleeful smile or the dollar signs in his eyes.

Some of the more paranoid residents had suggested Abraham kept toe tags in his suit pocket and others remarked on his somewhat clairvoyant ability to sense when a resident had fallen down and broken a hip. To a person, they all feared Abraham.

Everyone, that is, except Conrad.

Three months earlier, Conrad had had enough of Abraham’s imperial rule and hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on the retirement home director. And such dirt there was! Abraham’s son, it turns out, was a high school dropout with dreadlocks and a bong in his back pocket. His wife Bianca (nicknamed Bunny in social circles and Pickle by her Scandinavian lover) spent her evenings guzzling boxes of red wine and busied her days spending Abraham’s money on antidepressant-fueled shopping binges.

Most scandalous of all was Abraham himself. Only recently he’d taken over at Shady Oaks Park after being released from his contract at the released from his contract at the much-vaunted Cottage Estates, largely considered the Rolls Royce of retirement homes. Sizeable amounts of money were alleged to have disappeared into a tangled web of holding companies and offshore bank accounts. While it was never proven, Abraham remained the chief suspect.

Conrad had been biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to make the tall man wither in his presence. “We’re just waiting for our associate to answer his door,” Conrad said.

Abraham drew nearer. Conrad could smell him now.

“You needn’t hover,” Conrad said. “I’m sure everything is fine. Bones will be out in a moment.”

“Are you sure? I could use my master key to unlock the door.”

Conrad held up a gloved hand.

“You will do nothing of the sort.”

“Nonsense,” Abraham moved toward the door.

“How is that son of yours?” Conrad said. “You know, the titan of industry. What is he again? A stockbroker on Wall Street?”

Abraham stopped short.

“He’s a stock boy at Walmart. You know perfectly well —”

A smile curled at the corner of Conrad’s mouth.

“And how about your wife? Bunny’s her name? Or is it Pickle?”

Abraham went white. He shoved his keys back into his jacket.

“Do tell me good sir, what is the Scandinavian word for pickles?” Conrad said.

Alfred, delighted to see the Grinning Reaper squirm, attempted to get in on the banter. A clever quip — involving raw cucumbers, the pickling process and Abraham’s wife’s non-virginal womanhood — formed at the tip of his tongue but never fully left his mouth. As Conrad struggled to hear what his associate was saying, Abraham mustered his courage.

“Where are you taking Mr. Bones this morning? Does this have anything to do with that man who visited the other day? The man in the red suit?”

Just then the door swung inward and Billy Bones appeared in his three-piece suit, smelling vaguely of mothballs. He stared blankly at the three men standing in the hallway.

“Billy!” Conrad said loud enough for his counterpart to hear. “What took you so long?”

“I was applying my cologne. Now let’s go find the target —”

“Tut-tut,” Conrad moved to place his blind hand over Billy’s mouth. He fumbled a little and poked Billy in the eye but nonetheless managed to stop his associate from talking. “Beware of prying ears,” he motioned in what he assumed was Abraham’s direction.

Billy gazed up at Abraham as though he was seeing him for the first time. He took a good long look, tilted his neck to either side to examine the tall man and then stepped back.

“You sure got a strange head on you,” he said.

Abraham, already flustered by Conrad, could only mutter his response. “I’m just as God made me, sir.”

“Ah yes,” Conrad said. “The maker truly did break the mold on that fine day.”

Alfred reached in and shut Bones’ door. Conrad twirled his cane. And Billy trudged down the hall ahead of the pack. They made it thirty feet before Abraham finally noticed the metal briefcase in Alfred’s hand. He called out.

“I’ll find out what you’re up to! Whatever it is, I assure you — you won’t get away with it!”

His voice faded as they rounded the corner. The three elderly assassins, carrying a case loaded with ammunition, were off to find Henrik Nordmark.

thirteen

Henrik realized he could never truly be a saint. He tried chivalry long ago and found it to be an abstract notion that was nearly impossible to accomplish in reality. He knew he would never do great things that made people speak of him with admiration. But watching that young man get thrown out of the office building made Henrik realize you don’t have to be good to be distinct or unique. An equal effect can be achieved by being bad. Henrik walked to the local shopping mall intent on becoming a public menace. It was easy, he decided. He would simply mimic the actions he found most deplorable in others. One could much more readily inspire hatred than love. Some day, he reasoned, he might grow out of aberrance. But for now, it was the first step along a diving board into a pool of eccentricity.

Once inside the shopping mall, Henrik proceeded to walk through the stores and haphazardly rearrange the clothes folded on the shelves. He would pick up an article — a T-shirt or a cardigan, a pair of pleated pants or a lady’s full bodice — it didn’t really matter what it was — and he would crumble it in his hands and unfold its sleeves, then place it back indiscriminately on the shelf. With each piece of clothing, Henrik imagined himself to be more and more wicked, a certifiable brute in this world. He furnished a demonic cackle, far too quiet for anyone to hear, but loud enough to underscore the depravity of his actions.

To Henrik’s immense dismay, the store staff didn’t seem to notice. He’d anticipated at least one of them would grow furiously angry and throw him out of the store on his heels. But none of them seemed to care. In one store, a young man wearing women’s jeans and a pink headband even followed along behind Henrik, dutifully cleaning up his mess and making small talk with him.

Henrik would have to up the ante.

He found the most crowded hallway in the mall and set about walking slowly and taking up as much space as he possibly could.
This will do the trick
, he thought. Many a time while walking down a busy city sidewalk, Henrik had found himself victim to the incredible scourge of slow, overweight women meandering along at a breathtakingly unhurried dawdle, their leisurely attitude and seeming obliviousness to the traffic jam behind them causing a rage to form deep within Henrik to where it manifested in a tightness in his chest. They always traveled in flocks, these women. Henrik had no such flock, but still, he set about eliciting an angry response from the shoppers in the mall. He waddled four times slower than normal, stretched out his arms and stumbled absently in people’s way when they attempted to pass him. To Henrik’s horror, his actions had little effect. No one seemed to notice him in the least. He was only one man after all and the shoppers could pass him easily on either side. Henrik increased his efforts and slowed down to a skulking crawl. He was almost standing still now. This made it even easier for the shoppers to garner passage along the crowded corridor. Henrik heaved a great sigh. This process, he realized, necessitated their being at minimum two meandering loafs. He could never achieve this alone.

Dismayed, Henrik headed to the food court in a last-ditch attempt to be hated by all.

Once inside the food court, he sat down in a crowded area next to the New York Fries and took off his shoe, followed by his sock, which he waved in the air dramatically for all to see. He then produced a pair of nail clippers from his pocket and began clipping his toenails one by one. He started with the second toe. It had a jagged, thick nail stricken with cavernous yellow craters and sharp edges on either side. It would need two attacks with the clippers at minimum, perhaps as many as six. Henrik dug in hard. Clip! A piece of nail shot straight from his toe and landed several feet away next to a family of four. They didn’t even look up from their soup. Undaunted, Henrik dug in again and chopped away at the toenail as though he was felling a great redwood in the forest. Clip! Clip! Clip!

Randomly, outrageously, pieces of toughened keratin flew from the end of his animal digit. With a devilish smile, Henrik dug into his middle toe and proceeded to obliterate its nail as well. He looked up from his work to discover the entire food court was oblivious to his actions. How could this not bother them? It would be driving Henrik crazy! He was already angry, but now grew even further incensed at the fact that he was outraged and they were not. Henrik returned to his undertaking with even more purpose. He chopped away at the other toenails before he reached his Everest — the big toe. His anger fled as he thought about all the quantifiable adjectives people in the food court might use to describe him when pieces of the big nail went flying; words like deplorable, heinous, unhygienic. True, in a perfect world he would rather be described in positive terms, with admirable, respectable and sanitary as the adjectives of the day. But this was not a perfect world. This was a prison in which Henrik had lived far too long in the solitary confinement of dreary dullness. He attacked his big toe in stages, chopping away first at the thick, difficult yellow sector on the left. Once free of this section, the rest of the toenail surrendered. But Henrik would show no mercy. He hacked away without remorse, caught pieces of nail in the air and threw them across the room. One fragment landed in the TacoTime salad of a woman sitting directly across from him.

Eureka!
Henrik exclaimed inwardly. This poor victimized woman would finally notice his appalling behavior. She would be forced to stand up in the crowd and scream at him. She would arouse the attention of the others and classify Henrik as an outright scoundrel.

But the woman didn’t notice the nail land in her salad. She continued eating, chatting all the while with her friend about Marc Anthony and how one day Jennifer Lopez would rip his heart out through his ass. Henrik watched in stupefied wonder as the woman ate every last bit of her salad. Together the two women stood up and walked away, leaving their trays on the table. Henrik hobbled over on one shoe and looked in the salad bowl. The woman had scraped it clean. There was no trace of the toenail. It could mean only one thing — Henrik’s nail was at the bottom of that woman’s stomach, swirling around with the Diet Coke and the taco meat.

Henrik felt himself about to vomit. He struggled to pull on his shoe and as he finished tying his laces, Henrik bent over and held his chest, determined not to deposit the contents of his stomach into the lady’s salad bowl.

Just then, an arrow sailed straight over his head and struck a poor Dunkin’ Donuts employee right in the chest. Henrik didn’t even see it happen. Quickly a crowd rushed to the man’s aid.
This is a tragedy!
they cried — although not nearly as great a tragedy as one might think. Only one week prior, the injured man had cheated on his wife with the teenage girl selling hot dogs at Orange Julius. He propositioned the hot dog girl outside a storage closet in the back hallway and then hammered away at her ruthlessly in the same closet, exited the moment he orgasmed and never spoke to her again. Until this moment his actions had gone unpunished.

That he was not entirely innocent would have been of small comfort to the three old men hiding behind the coffee kiosk across the way.

“Did we get him?” Conrad whispered to Billy Bones.

Billy was busy tucking the crossbow back in the briefcase.

“What?!” he yelled.

“I asked did we get him?” Conrad said louder.

“No!” yelled Billy Bones. “We shot some other guy instead!”

“Keep quiet, you damned fool,” Conrad swatted Billy Bones across the face with his glove. But Billy would not keep quiet. His senility was increasing exponentially by the hour. He yelled at Conrad, “Don’t be mad at me! Alfred’s the one who shot him!”

Faces in the crowd turned away from the ailing man and began searching for the source of the arrow. Their eyes focused on the area where the three elderly assassins were now ducking behind the coffee kiosk.

“I think we should take our leave,” Alfred said inaudibly.

“What?!” Billy Bones yelled again.

“I think we should take our leave.” Alfred slammed his fist on the kiosk in outrage that no one was listening to him.

Conrad stood up. “Now, Bones!” he screamed. “Now!”

Billy Bones stood up as well and looked down at the wheelchair the elderly assassins had brought with them. Unsure what to do, he stared back at his blind associate, his mind occupied by puppies and rainbows, the lifelong quest for fine bourbon and long-legged women in scanty attire. Conrad swung his cane wildly in the direction of Billy’s leg, missed the shin bone entirely and caught him right on the ankle. The sudden stab of pain shot Billy out of his senile musings. He collapsed in a heap in the wheelchair.

“Step aside,” Conrad said to the growing crowd. “This man requires immediate medical attention.”

Alfred looked down to discover Billy Bones wasn’t entirely acting. He’d already fallen asleep in the chair. Alfred grabbed the handles and started pushing. Conrad took his arm and they fled — well, rather they slowly shuffled — through the crowd with Alfred steering, Conrad swinging his cane to clear a path and Billy Bones snoring as though he’d fallen asleep in front of his black and white television.

Henrik stood in the middle of all of this, completely baffled. He couldn’t quite see the man in the cape and his two associates make a bungling — though surprisingly successful — exit past Banana Republic and off into the distance. And he wasn’t really sure what happened to the man lying on the ground. There were two crowds, one watching the elderly men make their escape and another huddled around the severely wounded Dunkin’ Donuts employee, and neither of them were congregated for Henrik.

Henrik frowned a sad frown and left the food court.

In the aftermath, no witnesses had any idea what had happened. They hadn’t noticed anyone in the food court acting strangely. Even Conrad’s cape was a detail that slipped the minds of those interviewed. The only witness who could positively identify the assassins was the teenage girl from the hot dog stand at Orange Julius. But she didn’t say a word. She couldn’t speak. She was too busy trying to wipe the smile off her face.