There was one rule to the simple orphanage and that was, “We don’t go down in the cellar.” Ginger, an old woman with hair like a fading sunset, had told Charlie the rule while standing in front of the doorless basement. A breeze, warm and damp, issued out of it. There was nothing about the darkness beyond that made him want to go down, so he had obeyed the rule.
Until Chrissy had disappeared. And then Jonathan. Charlie began looking for a way to leave, but Ginger locked all the doors and windows whenever she left and somehow watched everyone when present.
So one night, when Ginger was in a sleep so deep she might have been dead, Charlie grabbed his hat and coat. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking into the cellar, open like a throat. He went down, uncertain of what he would find, paralyzed into stillness when his foot hit the bottom with a sound like a wet sponge.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Ginger say from the top of the stairs. “But it’s not a house Charlie,” and she closed the door. There was a gurgle and the floor moved beneath his feet.
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I walked away, headed towards a tram that might take me anywhere, as long as it was our separate ways.
It was dark and unseasonably cold by the time I made my way to the casino, neither of which helped me in being late. Gaspard, seeing me in not much better condition than last time, sighed with resignation and waved me towards the locker room. He made some comment about the dim lights of the slot machine sector hiding my face, as if he were planning on having me work anywhere else.
In the reflective prism of the slots and all the new information I had, time passed quickly. The only occupational problem being whether a high-class hustler and a couple of his whores needed ejecting. That didn’t require much of my brainpower, though – a raised hand from Thibalt indicated they had permission from someone to be there.
Even so, when my first break came around I was too restless to spend it sitting, so I cruised around searching for Jasper. He was outside, under the awning of the employee entrance, sucking on an electronic cigarette. He couldn’t even get being French right. At least, I noted, he stood just outside the external cameras field of vision, blocked by the corner.
A tiny blue light flickered at the end of the cylinder he had in his mouth. Both of us stood in the shadow of the industrial fluorescent lighting of the employee entrance and said nothing. Jasper pointedly ignored me. I jumped whatever social complexities he was trying to construct by saying, “I need to get ahold of Sartre.”
Jasper languidly exhaled a cloud of vapor, as if he were Alain Delon himself. Staring off into the night, he might have been preparing some bit of poetry, but instead he said, “Oui?”
“Yes, oui,” I inflected the French version of the word with my worst American accent, making it sound like it was pronounced by some lost Appalachian tribesman. I knew there weren’t any microphones on the external cameras and with no one around I spoke unreservedly. “He told me you were working for him. I know it was you who passed him the information about the high-roller that night the Beard was in the casino, so I know you have a means of contacting him directly.” That last part was a guess, but the flash in Jasper’s eyes told me it was a good one. “So I just need you to tell him we need to talk. I have his answer for him.”
Imitating a man of much greater importance that he was, Jasper replied, “Tell me what you want him to know and I will pass it on.”
Jasper’s unctuousness was annoying to me at the best of times, but now I tightened my fists so I could hear the ligaments creak. “Tell him I need to talk and that I’ll be here till the end of my shift.” I stepped close enough to him that he was forced to straighten himself from the constant slouch that hours of monitor watching induced. “If I don’t see him before I leave I’m going to assume you didn’t speak to him.” I mentally hardened myself, externally projecting my restraint as I flipped through my list of options of continued responses. A direct threat might give Jasper a reason to go to management; I probably wouldn’t lose my job but I didn’t need the trouble. So I breathed deeply and exhaled out of my nose, lifting a finger to level it at his chest, bringing a seriousness to contrast with my words. “If that’s the case, you will hurt my feelings.”
Confusion flooded Jasper’s eyes, then new kinds of anxiety and fear followed as he tried to understand my words. His mouth dropped open to reply and the e-cigarette fell out, which he caught with a stumbling gesture. He stared at it in surprise as if it had dropped out of the sky. When he lifted his eyes back to me, he smiled weakly and said, “Oui, of course. We are friends, yes?”
I grabbed him by the shoulder in an ostensibly chummy manner grinding the bird-like bones of the complex joint together, causing his smile to waver as I made the subtext of my message clear. “Thanks.” I faked as much sincerity as I could in that statement. I released him and headed back inside.
I tried to relax for the rest of my shift. Inside the casino was about as safe as I was going to get and I had little to no control on what happened outside the casino. A part of me worried about Sophie, but I knew she would tell me not to, so I tried to focus on other things. I stayed out of guests’ way, kept a careful eye out for too loose slot machines, and tried to get off my feet when I could.
Sometime past midnight there was a buzzing in my ear, a tone letting me know it was one-to-one communication. Jasper’s voice came through and only said, “Out back, next to the loading dock.” I tapped on the earpiece’s receiver, letting him know I had gotten the message, and said thank you to the open air, confusing a young and slightly drunk couple who were walking by at that moment. They glanced at me, then at each other when I didn’t speak further, then laughed and walked on. I watched them walk on for a bit, my envy going with them.
Not wanting to deal with Gaspard, I let Thibalt know I was being summoned by management, and he nodded with the trust that exists between professionals. I took the same path out that we had used to get rid of Lanzo when he had been just some unknown Corsican. Walking through the utility hallways, I wondered if we would be better off if I had never mentioned him to Sophie. I put that out of my mind just as quickly. There was no point in dwelling on that now. Sartre was waiting.
It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so many other things. The Halloween dance of orange flame and black shadow moved across the facade of the house, bursting windows and warping siding, consuming everything once it had reached critical mass. As timbers began to give way, it was clear that nothing inside would survive, including my grandmother.
Which was what I wanted. It’s why I set the fire.
It wouldn’t take long for anyone who looked too hard to discover it wasn’t an accident. The oven and the gasoline would be a dead give-away. It would only be a matter of time before someone suspected me.
I watched it burn anyway. I needed to know everything inside was consumed by that holy fire.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
I think I might have have managed to hide my considerable surprise under, “What?”
Some of my confusion must have poked out, causing Balaclava to smile with the boldness of his plan. “Lanzo,” he leaned forward with the name, grinning as if all of the violence between us, real and implied, had just been a jostling among brothers. “The Corsican you beat on at the casino. He was there bothering the Russian because he had met his girl the other night. She got out a bunch of nights in a row. They saw each other.” He clasped his hands over his heart and swooned backward, crowing cynically, “They fell in love.”
Just like that, this idiot provided a huge chunk of the answers I had been scratching around for. And still, I felt like I was having a hard time keeping up.
While Balaclava and his friends chuckled at his play-acting, a part of me tried to do the math: How many people was he betraying by doing this? How many lives would it end or ruin? For a second, I regretted not killing him in the cafe. But that would have created a mess for Simon, so I put that aside with, “You’re going to kidnap her?”
“The Russian forbids her to see Lanzo. But if she thinks it is for Lanzo, she will come to us.” He stepped back, opening his arms to backwardly gesture to his two friends. “Then we keep her away for a time until the Russian gives up money.”
I thought about this and how it might sound like a good plan to anyone who didn’t know much about Mitnick. These guys didn’t even know he wasn’t actually Russian. “And you need Sartre for – ?”
Balaclava shrugged. “We don’t need him.” Scratching his nose, he seemed to be acquiescing to the realities of the world. “But he might be upset if we did not involve him.” I had to give him credit for that – Sartre would almost assuredly be pissed if someone tried to pull this kind of thing off and he wasn’t notified in advance. That isn’t the only thing they’d need Sartre for, though. Somewhere in the back of my head I felt a faint, brief pulse, an idea trying to take shape.
It started with a question. “What about your friend? He was screaming “je l’aime” the other night. Doesn’t that mean something?”
Balaclava shrugged, breaking eye contact to stare down the avenue. “Once he sees the money, he will come around.” Another shrug, trying hard to prove his indifference.
I stared at him, trying to figure out who he thought he was fooling. With nowhere else to go, I gave a despicable laugh to cover my anger. “Of course he will.” I tried my hand at translating a bit of American slang into French, “Les gars avant les poulettes?” I laughed again, almost sounding natural. Balaclava began to chuckle as well, relaxing a bit, as if my words acted as some kind of absolution. I was glad he couldn’t see the judgement in my heart: He wasn’t any better than then men who ran that henhouse. He might feel a bit bad about what he was doing to his friend, but he was still callously using people to better his shitty life.
With him put off-balance by guilt and uncertainty I gave him a push with, “The girl we’re talking about – her name is Nika?”
It was Balaclava’s turn to be surprised. To my satisfaction he didn’t hide it very well. “Oui – how did you know that?”
I didn’t answer that, instead shifting my eyes around, scanning the area as if I were suddenly concerned about eavesdroppers. “And when you met her at the Factory, she was with a man? Named Sergei?”
Balaclava only nodded, his surprise morphing into suspicion, his eyes following my own, wondering what else he wasn’t seeing. “Then you’re going to need Sartre for more than permission.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to need him for protection.” I stared blankly at him, as if delivering old news. “Sergei’s dead. Mitnick killed him.”
Balaclava stared at me in astonishment for a moment, then something a bit like regret came into his eyes. “Ah, damn. He was cool.”
“And now he’s dead.” Saves you a step, I thought. If Mitnick had let the girl out, Sergei might have come with her. “If Mitnick was willing to kill him for letting the girl off her leash, what do you think he’ll do to you?”
He nodded, his dangerous ignorance of Mitnick slightly diminished. “Oui oui, c’est ca.”
“So you’ll need Sartre to hide you away from him, keep all the right people with their mouths closed.” I took measurement of the situation by placing a hand on Balaclava’s shoulder, restraining the urge to crush it. He didn’t flinch or withdraw, more comfortable with physical contact than any American. “I’ll talk to him for you.” I shrugged without taking my hand off him, “He might have some good advice.”
Balaclava nodded in a distant way, perhaps trying to process that there was no longer a Sergei or that Mitnick wasn’t just some rich Russian beach trash. My positive reply, though, made its way through the noise of his thoughts and his nodding became more enthusiastic. He rubbed his chin and straightened himself out. The Algerian and Fatty shuffled a bit, feeling the tension pass. Uncertain of how I was going to get in touch with Sartre, I decided I was having enough of that problem. So I asked Balaclava, “How do I find you?”
I was certain that he, like most everyone, had a mobile phone, but after a moment of consideration he went with, “We’ll be at the Factory most nights this week. In the Abattoir, same as before. Come by and we can talk.” He said it in such a way that he might have owned the place.
“OK.” I clapped my hands on his shoulder and took it off. He offered his hand for a shake and introduced himself as Max and I pretended I didn’t know it already. I told him my name and we smiled at each other as sometimes men do after they’ve fought. It was a shame – in that moment I might’ve been able to like him if he wasn’t planning to betray a friend.
The Chief of Persona was aghast as he watched one of his news anchors break from script and began babbling the truth while on-air. Yells went up from everyone in the Control Room as the Anchor went dead-eyed and, in a soulless monotone, began speaking the actual god-forsaken truth and announcing that the Administration had known about it all along. The Chief ordered the feed cut and the crew switched it to La Sal’s newest pop song, “Everyone’s a Refugee!”
It was already too late, though. The hyper-critics were waiting to pounce, recording everything they could as the Anchor blathered about facts and statistics, metric tons, number of households effected, the name of the party boss that had cleared the decision. It’d only be a matter of minutes before they posted it on every social feed, micro-blog, news aggregation and discussion site. It would take the censors minutes to clean it up. The truth, even just a little bit, would get out. Again.
Off the air, it only took a minute to discover the damned fool of an Anchor had been hacked, probably slipped a neural worm while out late partying. An excessive lifestyle was one of the few benefits of being part of the administration’s mouthpiece. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault, but someone was going to have to take the blame for this. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the Chief.
