Marvin, I’m Glad You’re Here
by Victor Kreuiter
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 3
The kid’s eyes went wide and Marvin wanted to choke him, twist his neck. He forced himself to let go, shoved the kid aside, closed his eyes and shook his head, rubbed his forehead and tried to slow his heart. “I told you,” Marvin said. “I told you about this business.”
The kid stepped away, looked at the stiff and then at the doorway. He was tensed up. A ringer? He wasn’t sure what that meant. He looked at Marvin, then stepped back into the reception area, eyes wide, to look at the man now sitting on the receptionist’s desk, head up, eyes wide, taking deep breaths. That was Randall Miller? “You’re Randall Miller?” he asked.
Miller nodded.
Stunned, Silva dropped his head, mouth open, breathing hard. “Okay,” he thought, “something is wrong.” He tried to put it into place, understand what had happened. He looked up to see Miller eyeing him. Was this a trick? He shoved that idea around in his mind and it bounced around and around until he wanted it to stop. He looked at Miller again, looked at Marvin Schoenhorst, then walked to the entrance and peered out the window. He tried the door and found it locked. He gritted his teeth and his eyes opened wide. “Open it.”
He bounced on the balls of his feet, still staring out the door, then he kicked the door and pounded on it with a fist. “Open it!” he shouted again. He was scared. He could feel heat rise in his chest, travel to his face. He pounded on the door again, kicked it, then turned and looked back at Randall Miller and Marvin Schoenhorst.
Miller had the phone in his hand and was dialing. Schoenhorst avoided eye contact. The kid ran back into the inner office — no door there, no window — ran back out and pounded at the door again.
“Open it!” He was almost running in place, head down, right beside the door, trying to think. His jaw was tight and his hands were fists, and he was thinking about how to fix this, how to remain calm. Remain calm. Could he do that?
What had Sozso told him? It would be easy, that’s what he’d been told. Sozso told him he was a natural. So now what? He’d bought a permit... wasn’t that right? Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? He glanced at Marvin, who looked exhausted, head down. The other guy. Randall Miller? Was that Randall Miller? The real Miller?
Miller was talking into the phone, quietly.
The kid tried to slow his breathing, rolled his neck, put his head down and breathed deep. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, puffed out his cheeks, exhaled, opened and closed his eyes several times, slowly.
“Wait...” he said. It came out very softly. That surprised him. It sounded like he was pleading. Pleading? No way was he pleading. He pushed himself flat against the door, tapped it with fists. He could see outside; the street was deserted. As far as he could see, left and right, nothing. Nobody. He should be out there and gone. He raised his voice. “Wait.” He’d done everything he was told, didn’t he? Sozso told him what to do, told him it would be easy. Sozso offered cash. Was he going to get paid now?
Then he heard the siren. He went perfectly still, standing inside the front door of Miller Racketeering. He could hear his breathing, and he could hear his heartbeat, and he wondered how he could be standing so perfectly still when his mind was racing like it was.
Everything was quiet; there was no sound coming from behind him or beside him. There was no other sound but that siren, drawing closer, and he was standing perfectly still when the squad car pulled up, siren fading. A man in a coal-black uniform stepped out and looked right at him. He heard a click — it made him jump — it was the front door unlocking, right in front of him. Who did that?
He turned to Miller and Schoenhorst; their heads were down. Silva turned back and watched as the man walked up, opened the front door and stepped in. Silva backed away, wondering why the guy looked so calm. The guy looked at him, then Marvin, then Miller, examined them, one at a time, slowly, then pointed to the patch on his shoulder. “Homicide,” he said.
Donald Silva felt himself shaking, then realized he’d been shaking all along. The hand that had held the gun — shaking. He felt his jaw tighten. His shoulders were trembling and his neck ached. He wanted everything to stop. Did he look weak?
The cop looked at him, pointed at him, then swung his eyes to Schoenhorst and Miller. “This the shooter?” he asked.
Miller and Schoenhorst nodded.
The cop turned and looked Donald Silva in the eyes, and Silva tried to return the stare. He was determined to look right into the cop’s eyes. Hadn’t he always wanted to do that? Stare down a cop? He wanted to show the cop he could do that.
He looked away.
The cop looked around the room and said to no one in particular, “Kill Permit?”
Big Marvin stepped over and handed the paperwork to the cop. The cop read it slowly and carefully.
Donald Silva was looking out through the front door, unlocked now. Couldn’t he get out there? Couldn’t he just step out there and take off? That ran through his mind fast, and then faster. Why was everything moving so fast? Then he remembered the implant. He had one. He’d paid for it out of his own pocket, a week ago. He bought it like it was a ticket to somewhere, like it was access to something. He’d paid for everything out of his own pocket, like he’d been told.
The implant was a tracking device.
Donald Silva was staring out the front door, thinking about that tracking device, when he heard the cop ask, “Mr. Silva, did you shoot and kill Randall Miller?” The cop put a hand on his shoulder.
Donald Silva looked over his shoulder. “Wait,” he said, “Wait... I just...” and the cop used his hand to slowly turn Donald Silva around to face him. “Ssshhh,” the cop said. “Take it easy, okay? Slow down. All I need right now is a simple ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ that’s all. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Take a deep breath. You need a moment?”
Donald Silva looked over at Big Marvin, and Marvin looked right into his eyes, and Marvin could see, right in the kid’s eyes, he could see everything there was about being a criminal. Fear. Anger. Bitterness. Confusion. Lots of bitterness and lots of fear. Regret.
Marvin Schoenhorst sighed.
The kid looked at the cop. “No,” he said. He shook his head, blinked, and tried to look the cop in the eye. He failed again and looked down. “I mean, I made a mistake.”
The cop didn’t even blink. He looked at Randall Miller, frowned and shook his head. “You’re Randall Miller, aren’t you?”
Miller nodded.
The cop looked at the paperwork again, reading with his lips moving just noticeably, then looked at the kid. He thought it wise to give the kid a moment to compose himself, so it got quiet and nobody said a word. Silva’s mind was racing. Marvin thought about what he’d said to the kid, how it hadn’t worked, how the kid went ahead anyhow.
Randall Miller was thinking how he’d stayed alive.
The cop? He was just waiting. He’d done this before, stood around a murder scene and waited for the grim reality to hit everybody. There was always a lull, a quiet time when every person involved was out of words and taking stock of what had happened and who did what and who had survived and who hadn’t.
When that quiet moment was up, when he could hear feet shuffling and he could see eyes start to rise and look around, he put a hand on Donald Silva’s arm and guided him out to his squad car and put him in the back seat.
Shooters almost always went quietly.
Then the cop walked back in, pointed at the office door with the splintered lock and said, “Body in there?”
“Yeah,” Marvin said. “And if you’re curious, that’s Harold Means. You probably know him.”
The cop, headed for the office, stopped and looked at Marvin. “Means, the death fetish guy?”
Marvin nodded. “Yeah. Him. It’s creepy, I know.”
The cop looked over at Randall Miller. Miller looked sheepish. He said, “He’ll take a bullet for you, but it ain’t cheap.”
Marvin held up a hand and waited to make eye contact with the cop. “I tried to talk that kid out of this,” he said.
The cop stepped toward the office, held the door frame and looked in, stepped back and asked, “Means got ReTurn® papers?”
“Yeah,” Miller said, “I called ’em in.”
Miller stood up, leaned over and handed the cop the ReTurn® papers and watched him read through them slowly, looking at signatures and dates and checking for the activation stamp. When he was done, he looked at Marvin and Miller. “You guys, there may be a few questions later on, you never know. You gonna be around?”
They both said yes.
Then the cop, calm as always in his coal-black uniform, drove off with Donald Silva, who had thought he was on his way.
There would never be questions from local police, or the courts, or anyone in law enforcement anywhere, ever. The monitors would be accessed, reviewed, and both the audio and the video would be enough. Case opened quickly. Case closed permanently. A violation of a Kill Permit? Sentencing would be simple.
A half hour after the cop was gone, ReTurn® arrived, took Harold Mean’s body and departed.
Then, excitement over, Marvin Schoenhorst and Randall Miller sat quietly in the dumpy reception area of Miller Racketeering. Miller stood, walked over and inspected the damage to his office door without saying a word. He went in and sat behind his big desk for a minute before standing up, walking out and sitting at the receptionist’s desk. He’d never had a receptionist, ever.
Marvin found his magazine again, sat and paged through it without seeing a thing.
Marvin had helped Randall Miller dodge a shooter. He thought about that, tried to place that thought somewhere but couldn’t find an empty space. All space was taken, filled with similar, miserable memories. He watched Randall Miller stumble around the office, happy to be alive. He wondered how much more of this he could take. Finally, he spoke: “You going after Sozso?”
* * *
Allan Pierce, small-time racketeer, had been shot dead two years earlier. After his reanimation, he had laid low for a while before slowly getting back into business as Randall Miller. Early on, he’d hinted to Marvin about revenge. That faded. Then, for the past month or two, he’d spread around a story that he was looking to hire a shooter, never mentioning a reason, a target, or a date.
It didn’t take long for Big Marvin to realize the hit was never going to happen; it was a ruse. Randall Miller only wanted to see if somebody would jump. Was anybody after his turf? That had to be the reason he’d be killed, right? A shabby office on a desolate street in a dying neighborhood? That’s turf? Worth killing for?
Randall Miller — aka Allan Pierce — was never sure who ordered his shooting. Donald Silva clarified the matter. It had been Vincent Sozso, and he had ordered it twice.
“I don’t know,” Miller said. “Really, I got another idea.”
Marvin pulled at his lower lip, frowned, sighed and blurted it out: “I’m leaving.” He didn’t make eye contact with Miller. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but it’s...” — he paused, glanced at Miller and searched for the words he wanted to say — “No offense to you, but this business, it’s over for me. I’m done.”
Randall Miller chewed on that for a second, he’d been expecting it, and then he thought about what he would say. He drummed fingers on the desk then said it. “Marvin, listen to this. I got an idea for the both of us.”
He grabbed the folder on the desk, turned it around, opened it and pushed it toward Big Marvin, then said,. “Don’t say no right away. I’ve been thinking.” He pointed to the papers exposed in the folder. “How about we write a book?”
Marvin drew back, frowned, then leaned over and looked down at pencil scratchings, paged through. There were names he recognized, notes on shootings and notes on robberies, notes on hijackings, what they got and what they did with it. Accounts of intimidations and shakedowns. Phone numbers and addresses. Men’s names. Women’s names. Dates of rigged card games in dive hotels and the dollar figures involved. All of it desperate and scrawny and all of it spelling out failure.
Miller wanted to write a book about this stuff?
“I been thinking,” Miller said. “Nobody likes criminals. We’re treated like riffraff. We are riffraff.” He looked to Marvin for some sort of response and got none. “We spend half our time creeping around trying to avoid others just like us, right? But it’s nothing like what you see in the movies, right? So, think about this, what if we write a book about what it’s really like. You know, an exposé of sorts. We act all penitent and sorry, like we’re reformed or something. We can do this, and we gotta do this before somebody beats us to it.”
He paused. “Look, I’ve asked around a little bit, and I’ve talked to a guy that said it might be a good idea. A great idea, even. And think of this, once ink hits paper we’re writers. Get it? An instant employment change. We’re legit!”
He paused again, trying to read Marvin’s expression. “Ever since crime was regulated and ever since, you know, ever since the hit was sanctioned, we’re struggling. Every day is uphill, fighting over peanuts. It’s crazy! But nobody has a book about that. I checked into it. I’m serious, we can do this. It could be made into a movie or something. We’d get paid for that, too.”
Marvin Schoenhorst’s stomach churned. What was he feeling? Exhaustion? Shame? He wasn’t sure. Contrition? He wasn’t sure what contrition was. A good thing, right?
He felt old and tired. He felt like thinking was more trouble than it was worth. Thinking was exhausting. Thinking? What had thinking ever got him?
Big Marvin. He hated that name; it was like he was a bum. Like he was something other than a real human being with a real name. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Look,” Miller said, “we can find somebody that can help us write the book. They got people like that. We tell ’em the stories and they write them up. It’s legal.” He laughed. “Hey! How many times you been killed?”
Copyright © 2023 by Victor Kreuiter
