It’s happened again
The greatest deception the devil ever pulled
was to convince people he didn't exist.
One glance in Jacques icy stare will prove otherwise. His stone cold glare. His frosty hands, are desirous for work. He has patience does his homework on you. Meticulous by nature. He knows your habits your routine. He watches you while you sleep. As he grabs a handful of your hair and drags you down the hall. Shoots with his own concoction you lie immobilized. Awake enough to know what's about to happen. You smell his brimstone breath as he inspects your scalp. Lovely he mutters just lovely. His axe and begins its work. Shaves your hair for his collection. Ties it with a pink ribbon. Making fast work of your frame. Blood trickles under the door. So do you still believe there's no devil? If you ever feel a wintry chill run down your spine dear reader, and a brush of your hair, while your laying in your bed all safe and warm. Know that Jacque is close axe at the ready.
How to Spell
You kept me anonymous because it was easier than learning to spell your name. If there’d been some way to shrink the miles between yesterday and forever, I would have made the journey. You wanted pieces of me to fit into the puzzle you’ve created for yourself, piecemeal and parceled, the way a pinch of salt adds just the right bit of flavor to a dish. I’m not a potato, but you thought I might be if you boiled me long enough, broiled me against the flame of something that almost felt like desire but when pushed, only turned off. I could dedicate a world to you and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Part 1
I doubt that anyone will ever read the words written within these pages. No friend or family, certainly. And these poor souls that wait with me in our hours of fading life can none of them read. They have treated me as an equal, with such kindness that my heart, weak as it is, still beats painfully to any compassion. If they knew my origins of office, I wonder if they might be so sympathetic, or would there be resentment and cruelty? What comes when a life is condemned to death? It seems that all those poets I once admired can feed nothing to the overwhelming emptiness. Matthew said that each man dies alone, but I still wish there were a familiar face to see before the darkness.
It can be nothing to you, reader, if you exist. These are the ramblings of a dying man and ramblings they must be, for my hand grows tired and my thoughts become blurry, but I will try to explain. Perhaps for my own gratification alone, or perhaps because there is something to be learned by my story. I imagine, as I write, that the words are being read aloud in some distant, cold voice that is not my own. Are we given to premonitions or do we merely make guesses that chance dictates are right or wrong? The question is one I will never answer.
More to Go
I set down the book, unsure what to think. Maybe I was seeing stuff? With the phone call, the text, and now this? I just needed sleep.
Heading upstairs, I went into my room. My window was wide open and the curtain moved with the breeze. Did I really leave my window open all day? I guess it was hot out earlier.
Shaking my head, I closed the window and got into bed, not even bothering to change.
Everything would be better tomorrow.
Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover
He had such beautiful eyes. When he asked her to go home with him, she readily accepted because he was so charming and handsome. The next morning, the body was found scattered in the woods, dismembered and bloody. The police searched the entire area but were unable to ever find HIS head.
The Joker’s Trick-Chapter 1
Waiting for a meeting with one of the most dangerous criminals in the world was torture. It was the hottest day New York City had seen in years and I was sitting in the blistering sun of an outdoor café and had been since noon. It was 2:13 now and there was no sign of who I was meeting. Even worse there was nothing to do but guzzle ice water and stare at a newspaper I’d already read twice. Sweat dripped from my nose and chin onto the pages, dappling the paper with wet spots and smearing the ink. My black wig was a fur hat roasting my brain and the knock off Italian suit clung to my body in all the wrong places. Meanwhile, my tie kept getting tighter as the heat tried to suffocate me. I tugged at it uselessly trying to give myself room to breathe.
My only thought as I struggled to ward off the heat was, “Why couldn’t Davis have chosen a location with air conditioning?”
Cameron Davis. Ten years ago he was a nobody in the criminal world. Just a dockworker who took bribes and got on a beat cop’s nerves. Today, he controlled the largest smuggling ring on the East Coast. Along with smuggling, he was suspected of bankrolling jewel thieves, a topnotch hacker, and orchestrating the assassinations of at least three politicians whose policies threatened his business. The reason he wasn’t enjoying a cozy cell in a federal prison was that any evidence we found against him was circumstantial. Any half-witted lawyer could get the evidence thrown out and the case dismissed.
After three months of deep undercover work, I had only gathered more circumstantial evidence. Cameron Davis took plausible deniability to the extreme. I’d been working for him for almost two months now and had only met the man once for a brief vetting of my skills as a retrieval specialist. The entire encounter had taken less than ten minutes and I’d spent most of it fighting his mercenaries.
Yesterday morning he’d called me personally and asked for a meeting at this café. The request came out of nowhere and the idea refused to sit right with me or my partner. But I couldn’t turn it down. I’d been looking for a way to get closer to Davis for months and this was my chance. An opportunity to do more than run errands.
On the other hand, Davis could have set up this meeting just to kill me.
A chill ran up my spine at the thought, a brief relief from the sweltering heat. I was leaning toward the former since he was two hours late, and killing someone usually made the top of people’s To-do lists. Not that I’d know the difference before it was too late.
If Davis did ever show I would still be in trouble. Almost always he had six bodyguards nearby. A habit courtesy of a home invasion where his wife was killed and his five year old stepdaughter kidnapped. The girl was never found, not that Davis shed any tears over the loss of either.
Anyway, six guys were too many for me to take on my own. Even though I had back up just down the street, the FBI wasn’t known for their speed. And in situations with guns every second counts.
I drank the rest of my water and set the glass back on the table. Condensation ran down the glass forming small puddles on the table top. A young waiter was over a moment later asking if I needed a refill. At the same time my partner’s voice buzzed in my ear.
“Any sign of him yet?”
I avoided looking at the surveillance van parked down the street and met the waiter’s eyes as I answered both of them. “Not right now.” The waiter nodded and hurried off to tend to a woman in a sun hat ready for her check.
“All right,” Mac sighed. “Another half hour, then we’re calling it.”
I replied in a low voice, “You’re delirious if you think I’m staying here for that much longer.”
He said something away from the microphone before coming back with, “Suck it up and buy another water.”
Although the heat was enough for me to start melting my smart mouth was unfazed. “Water here is free. I paid for the glass.”
“And it’ll be a nice souvenir. Be thankful you’re not sitting in a van with the AC off.”
“I think it’s better than where I am,” I said half-jokingly.
A smart remark could have followed but didn’t. Instead, Mac said, “Take a breath, Justin. We’re right here if you need us.” And that was my cue to relax and shut up.
I listened and took a breath. Uncomfortably hot air filled my lungs and melted away the tension in my chest. Gradually I started feeling okay for the first time today. It stayed that way for a little while before thoughts of the meeting, two hours overdue as it was, slipped in. It was too hot for nerves, but my paranoia was thriving. Every car and passerby entered my awareness. Any one of them a possible threat. A potential enemy. I could feel myself spinning out of control trying to spot tells of every person on the street. I opened the newspaper and did what I always did when I was losing control. Put all my negative emotional energy into destroying something. In this case, it was the sports section.
Ten minutes later the paper looked as if I’d started to feed it through a shredder then yanked it back out. I turned to the next page and started on the comics when someone sat down across from me. I looked up as I made a rough tear through a Garfield comic.
He was a stereotypical bodyguard. The broad shouldered, square headed man with black sunglasses and an earpiece corkscrewing along his neck. Instead of a uniform he wore casual clothes in an attempt to blend in. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wanted him to say, “I’ll be back.” Just for kicks.
I calmly closed the paper and set it on the table. “You’re not Mr. Davis.”
“No, Mr. Finch.” His voice was higher than I’d expected. “I’m here to bring you to him,” he continued. “Mr. Davis believes this location has been compromised.”
“He’s not wrong,” I thought, the FBI surveillance van sitting in the background. Mac was inside probably making a dozen frantic calls trying to decide what to do. I managed to keep my own alarm hidden as I met the guard’s shielded gaze.
He leaned forward and took the newspaper. He flipped it open, then glanced at me over the rim of his sunglasses. I shrugged. “I’ve been waiting since noon. If I had known I’d be left waiting for two and a half hours, I would have brought something else to occupy myself.”
The slightest disappointed look flashed across his face before he set the paper down. “He sends his regrets for keeping you waiting. Something urgent came up this morning and he only remembered your meeting a short time ago.” The way he said it warned me not to ask.
“Apparently,” I agreed irritatedly, although I didn’t really feel it. The heat had drained me and I didn’t buy a word of it anyway. But my cover required me to be a man who should’t be kept waiting. So I was. “You’ll be taking me to him then?” He nodded. “And if I refuse to go? I’d say I have a right to.”
His expression hardened. “Then Mr. Davis will understand and see it as a refusal to work with him. You go on your way and Mr. Davis never bothers you again.”
I pretended to think it over. At the moment, all I wanted to do was walk away. I was tired, probably on the verge of heat stroke. Sleep was working its way into being the only thing I wanted next to a cold shower. But if I left, I’d lose three months of working my way into Cameron’s organization. As I saw it, I had no choice.
“Very well then. When do we leave?”
“Now.” He stood as a black car pulled up to the curb, its driver obscured by tinted windows. He went over and opened the back door, gesturing for me to get in. The seat was empty but that didn’t mean anything.
I made no move to get up. Setting my cheek in my palm I worked the earbud out of my ear. “Am I allowed to know where I’m going?” I asked calmly, grabbing my newspaper and folding it up. As I did so I slipped the earbud in between the pages, then laid it back on the table.
“You are not.”
Knowing this was a bad idea I stood and straightened my suit, giving a curt nod before going to the car. He closed the door behind me. I caught a glimpse of him walking away before a hood was pulled over my head. I forced away the urge to fight back as the car peeled away from the curb with angry horns following us down the street. Someone patted me down and I almost didn’t notice when they slipped my cellphone out of my pocket. The driver’s window rolled down. A second later it was rolled back up.
“Hope there wasn’t anything important on that,” someone muttered.
I didn’t comment as we drove on in silence.
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