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Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter Fifteen

Nothing Like a Motivated Employee

Chapter 15 – Nothing Like a Motivated Employee

The Audi with the broken windshield had just found a nice home under a highway underpass, right next to a Toyota, up on blocks with the wheels, hood, and doors gone.  David was now on foot walking.

“Ya gotta tell me what’s going on Artie.”

“This thing is really big.  Too big for you and me.  I’m better than they are, but there are too many of them.  I can’t cover myself anymore.  The three machines running out of timing sequence was too much for them.  The third one may have even been a plant just to catch you.  I got a shitload of data to work with, but I had to pull it off the net just to look at it.  I’ve had to disconnect almost completely.  They’ve blown out all my firewalls.  They’re after me from all directions.”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know.  There seems to be lots of them. Someone is spending a lot of money chasing me. It’s not just kids.  It’s money, women, drugs, weapons.  It’s like a Sears catalogue.  Anything you want and can’t get at Wal-Mart.  It’s worth trillions.  I don’t know who are the good guys and bad guys.  The feds are easy to spot just like the KGB, and every other government cop.  The CIA is at it from all directions, but you can still tell it’s them.  But there has got to be another hundred in on the thing, and I don’t know if they are watching, building the network, buying or what.  The worst part is, they’re after me now.  They’re not shooting at me, but they’re after my systems.  The feds gotta be involved as they’re using technology I made for them.  Either that or somebody stole it from them, but I’ve never seen it used before.

"This is big and bad.  I’m even a bit scared of the phone.   I’ve got it well hidden, but don’t say anything too crazy on it.  This is huge.  Don’t call me again if you can help it, and ditch the laptop, somebody might trace it.  I’ll still be working for you.  Don’t you doubt that for an instant?  And don’t go near the other names.  They’re obviously onto you and know who you are after.  I can’t get anything from their computers anyway.  I’m sure they’ve moved the network or shut it down for a while.  Go home.”

David waited for Artie to pause.  “Thanks for your help.  You’re more of a friend than I could ever ask for.  I’ll get back to you if I find anything.”

Reality had changed once again.  Artie’s words resounded in his head.  ‘Go Home.’  How could he?  Nobody was there.  Not that it could be home again without Ashley.  He wondered if the guys with the black suits, black sunglasses and big black guns had already been to his house.  Did everybody get their messages?  Did they do what they were told? Was the family safe?  He had to move fast.  Collateral damage was the way wars were won, and he was about to do some serious damage.

They, whoever ‘they’ were, were onto him.  Time was important now.  No time to change his look, or plan the next move as he initially thought.  But he did have a few ideas.  Picking up a local newspaper, he picked the closest street, and was able to buy a Volkswagen Jetta fully equipped with license plate.  The extra hundred for the plate was so easy that David assumed the teen who sold it to him had probably stolen it anyway.  David was tempted to let him know where there was a nice Audi under a bridge.

The psycho killer had a list with the names of a hundred bad guys.  Their computers were no good to him anymore, and most of the operators had probably run off already.  Then again, he had another list Sandy had so kindly made for him.  He hadn’t had time to look at it yet, and Sandy’s writing was pretty bad.  David was still thinking collateral damage.  With a pen he had picked up at the seven-eleven, he began to circle the names closest to him.  There were a lot of names.  Seems Jersey and New York were the hotspots for this sort of underground activity.  Why not?  Lots of people, good transportation centers, lots of fiber optic cables for high speed transmissions, and not a bad place to live.  Besides that, in cities this big, a creep could hide anywhere.

He had his maps, cash, lists from Sandy and Artie, a cell phone he probably shouldn’t use, a beat up Volkswagen, and a couple of handguns donated by two tall skinny guys in a totaled silver sedan.  He was ready to do damage.

He marked his maps with red circles around the names in Artie’s list.  He didn’t look at Sandy’s list yet as he was the only one who had it, and nobody knew about it but he and Sandy.  He would save that for later.  The first stop was defiantly the office of Victor Martindale.  With an address like Vic’s Books, this seemed like a guy who was a pillar of society. Someone with whom  David wanted a conversation.  His office was on Newark Avenue less than a mile from the entrance to the Holland tunnel which would bring David back into Manhattan to hide.

This was a difficult drive for David.  Lots of crazy stories running through his head.  Deaths.  Murders.  A little girl’s body dumped in the woods.  It was a bad drive.

Brian Tiernan had been killed in self defense.  Sort of an accident.  Sandy had killed himself, and the two guys in the silver car had sort of killed themselves.  Besides that,  they had tried to kill him.  They carried guns and were obvious bad guys.  No loss there.  But Vic.  This could pose a moral dilemma.  David has no dispute with dirty old men.  If the guy was a pig, that was his business.  If he was on the list because of a foot fetish or a desire to wear women’s clothing and look at girlie pictures, that was his business.  But why was he on this list?  What exactly was this list? Artie had given it to David to turn on the computers.  He had said nothing about these being bad guys that should be snuffed.  He simply indicated they had computers he had to access.

Tiernan had been a bad guy, no doubt.  Sandy must have been doing something really bad….he killed himself.  And the last spot…Well, somebody tried to kill him just for being there.  What were the odds that Vic was just a pig, trying to make a living selling dirty books?  Not good.  David pointed the Jetta in Vic’s direction.

A drive by the porno bookstore revealed a small shop with blackened windows, and a big steel door.  No parking in front and an apartment above.  Painted in gold on the black windows was simply the words VIC’S.  It didn’t look like a popular place, and right now, it looked closed.  An assortment of other small equally drab buildings surrounded VICS. A bakery that looked closed, an electrical shop, a grocer.  All just average folks operating the best they can in their miserable little world.

After three passes by the property, the Jetta pulled into a side street two blocks from VIC’S.  The gray Jetta fit nicely between a big old Buick, and a rusty old Yugo.  David got out of the Jetta, locked the doors, and stepped back to take another look at the rusty Yugo.  It was in about as bad of shape as a car could be and keep running.  He admired it for a moment and thought that it probably should have been in a museum someplace.  A collector’s car, and a reminder of just how cheap of a car a person can possibly buy.  This one probably didn’t even run any more.  It looked like it had been sitting for some time, but unlike the Audi, it didn’t have enough value to anyone to even  strip it.

Walking past three story apartment houses, David approached VICS from the street behind it.  Most of the homes in this area had once been two or three story, single family homes, and had since been converted to multi-family properties.  Steel staircases wound up the sides and rear of each of these properties.  They were cheap, ugly, rusty stairs installed just to meet building codes.  The trees that had once lined the streets had long since disappeared, and chain link fences surrounded many of the yards.  Each house was a different color.  Some with peeling paint.  Some vinyl sided.   A few in between were painted bright colors as their owners tried in desperation to make them cheerier than their dismal surroundings.

On the drive-bys, David had carefully noted the color of VICS, the steel staircase on the side of it, the shape of the apartment above, and the color of the apartments behind it.  When David reached the brown three story home with white trim, he turned into the driveway without hesitation.  His body didn’t falter but internally his heart jumped, skipped beats and did the electrocution thing.  He was scared, angry, uncertain, and totally out of place.  His body kept moving according to plan, while a major battle played in his head.

He wanted to go home.  To play in the pool with his kids.  His wife and their friends would be there, and they would have a cookout, laugh and enjoy each other.  It would be a sunny day.  Not at all like the gray skies above this place.  And the trees would be bright green, with leaves rustling gently from the slight breeze.  There would be no noise from nearby highways, or stench from overflowing garbage cans.  He looked at the kids playing a made up game of volleyball in the pool.  Jamie skied up and spiked the ball over the net, splashing it in an empty spot.  Callie and her cousin Sarah both dashed for the space.  Ashley.   Ashley…  She wasn’t there.  His wife wasn’t smiling.  She sat in a chair next to her sister, who had her hand on her lap.  All of the adults looked subdued. Nobody was happy, and the sky was kinda gray.  It looked like it might rain a little later that day.

There was no gate in the link fence between the twenty feet of lawn that separated the buildings.  David vaulted the fence easily, noting the peeling gray paint of the backside of Vic’s Books.  The Metal fire escape in the rear was brown from rust, but looked safe.  He bounded the stairs two at a time with almost no noise, as the spikes of the metal stair treads could be felt right through the soft rubber soles.  The first floor had no windows.  As he rounded the first turn of the stairway and headed up past the second floor, he noted shades on the windows and a steel door with no window.  The steel door worried him.  Rounding the next turn he bounded upwards feeling the flakes of rust on his fingers and his palms, right though the surgical gloves.  Obviously nobody had been up this stairway in some time. Eyes glued to the door above him, he continued his assent to the attic level of the apartment above Vic’s.

Still striding the stairway two treads at a time, he reached the third story doorway, and without stopping at all, thrust his full weight into the steel door.  The door may have been steel, but the door frame was not.  With relative ease, and little noise, the door jam shattered and gave way, as the hunter entered the blackened apartment that was very dark. 

Window shades in the front of the room provided a yellow glow that might have even provided reasonable visibility had it been bright enough outside.  David quickly shut the door behind himself, turning to see the splintered wood and broken pieces of two door bolts and a chain being forced together like non-matching pieces of a puzzle.  It fit close enough, and the door would look closed from the outside.  There were no signs that any alarm was connected to this door.

There was almost nothing in this room of yellowed walls and filtered light.  A lone light bulb in the ceiling appeared dust covered and gave no light to the lone mattress and the boxes against the wall.  Two doors on opposite walls obviously led to a stairway down, and a closet.  The first choice was a closet.  The heart rate had skyrocketed, and the doorknob had been so cold.  The closet was totally empty.  Now knowing which door led to the second floor, he opened this one slowly, not at all like the first one he had ripped opened.

As the door to the second story opened, he could see nothing.  Another door at the bottom of the stairs was closed, and the faint yellow light of a cloudy day, filtered through faded window shades could be seen sneaking through the space at the bottom of the door and a bit around the edges where it didn’t close properly. Waiting a minute for his eyes to adjust, he could see there was nothing on the wooden stairs.  Nothing to trip on.  But no carpet to muffle the sound of his footsteps.

The Converse All Stars were great on the creaky old steps.  Soft steps with muffled sounds, going all the way to the bottom of the stairs.  With his ear against the door, David reached his right hand up under the back of his own jacket and gripped the handle of the big black automatic he had taken off the body of the driver of the silver sedan.
This one hadn’t been fired like the one he took off the passenger, but it was lighter, and David was pretty sure it worked.  Guys like them didn’t carry non-working versions.  Besides being very large, the passenger’s weapon was bloody.  David had pried it out of the broken fingers of its previous owner and had done the best he could to clean it.  The blood seemed to stick to the grip, and he didn’t like the idea of holding it.  Pulling it out of the hand of its prior owner wasn’t easy.  Several fingers had been partially severed when its prior owner’s hand hit the dash and his body weight slammed him through the airbag and windshield and into the brick wall.  The side of the barrel was even a bit scratched with tiny chunks of brick stuck to it.  When he tried to pull it from the hand, the partially severed index finger got stuck in the trigger guard, and it was pretty disgusting, literally ripping the finger off to get the gun.  It was gross.  Not a gun he wanted to carry.

The room was quiet.  He pulled his ear off of the door, gripped the cool doorknob with his left hand and turned slowly.  The door opened slightly without a creek.  Funny how the old beat up doors in a run down home work well, and the ones in his own home creaked, were hard to open, and never seemed to close tightly. 

The first view was of a thirty year old sickening green colored couch that looked even worse in the glow of the dull sunlight filtering through the old yellowed shades.  There were no pictures on the wall around it, and the wall-mounted lights were so covered with thirty year old paint, it appeared unlikely they had been used in some time.  The hardwood floor was partially covered with a fifty year old round loop rug that probably belonged to the creep’s mom who died twenty years ago.  That or she was probably sitting in a chair in the corner of the room staring with her mouth hung open and unable to speak, looking at the door from the attic moving open so slowly.

David pushed the door open further.  Slowly and deliberately, the door opened and David could now see what looked like a closet door, then another door that probably led to the bedroom.  A very old picture of some flowers sat in a small frame on the wall between the two doors.  Now was the big moment when he stuck his head around the corner.  No chair with grandma.  Near the front windows where the yellowed shades were drawn, and dull sunlight filtered into the room, was a small wooden table with two chairs.  A half empty coffee cup on the table, and a bunch more in the sink to the right next to a thirty year old white refrigerator and a gas stove.  A kerosene heater sat in the middle of the small living room floor.  Cheap bastard couldn’t even pay the gas bill.

The bathroom door was open, and the grimy, thirty year old white sink and tub, appeared to be rusting as he looked at them.  The dripping sink had probably been running for five years or better.  There were doors on either side of the bathroom.   The one to the right looked like a door to the first floor store with a locking door knob and a chain lock, left open.  The door on the left had a sliding bolt lock on the top of the door to keep whatever was in there out, or possibly to keep a child from getting into the room.

There was no noise from either door.  David reached for the doorknob on the right, turned and pulled the door in slowly.  Steps led downward to the bookstore.  He closed the door and locked it.  Returning attention to the door on the left, he reached up above his head, pulled down the slide bolt and opened the door with his left hand with the big heavy metal weapon grasped firmly in the sweating right hand inside the clear latex glove.  As the door opened, he saw the headboard of a steel bed and the side of an old cheap brown dresser.  Opening the door all the way, he now saw a window that had been boarded with a big piece of plywood and screwed shut.  A small lamp with a tiny light bulb sitting on dresser provided enough light to see the room but not enough to tell just how dirty it was.  David felt grateful for that.

There were very few possessions in the home.  It appeared to be a temporary apartment.  Probably not a permanent home. There were a few food items on the shelves in the kitchen, but only coffee cups in the sink.  There were towels and soap in the bathroom but no cloths anywhere.  Dropping the handgun to his side, he pulled the closet door handle sure to see a stash of porno books, or perhaps a few dirty shirts and a tacky bathrobe.  The door  opened easily, unlike his doors at home.

She was fifteen or sixteen.  Black hair and dark skin.  Black tank top and black jeans.  A black leather strap held a black bar in her mouth so tight, it pulled at the corners.  Blindfolded with a black scarf.  Hands tied behind her, and feet in front.  She sat motionless in the closet, feet against the far wall, back on the other wall, and head tilted back.  Motionless, she lay there.  She had given up all hope for survival and had died right there.  Yes, she was obviously dead.   He didn’t want to touch her.  No need to.  She didn’t smell, she didn’t move.  He could see her thin little neck.  There was no blood moving through her.  She was dark skinned, but she was a gray color.  The color of death.  The color of this home and the neighborhood, and the entire city.  Somebody else’s daughter

Backing out of the room David, was flooded with thoughts.  He wondered who she was.  She looked just like the dead men in the car, Brian Tiernan on the floor, and Sandy in the chair.  They were all dead.  They had no more meaning to him than the steaming hulk of a car against the brick building or the laptop in Sandy’s apartment.  He tried to invent a story to make the dark skinned girl real.  She was a schoolgirl going home with friends and attracted by a guy with a big car and some cash.  She was a prostitute that just wanted a few bucks.  She was some other guy’s property, dumped here because he didn’t know what do to with the girl that couldn’t hustle enough money.  She was some banker’s daughter.  She was dead.

He had no story for the little body.  This was not his life.  He was stuck in a bad TV cop show.  He was being tested by the Gods from above.  Tested to see how he would react.  Would he go bad, like the guys he was chasing?  Give up?  Kill himself?  Go home?  Call the cops?  So many choices.  He was being tested for sure.  He had already gone mad.  He was in a very, very bad black and white TV cop show.

He sat in the old wooden chair at the old wooden table in the kitchen.  As the sun was going down, the yellow filtered light grew dimmer on the yellowed shades in the old peeling windows.  It had been a couple of hours, sitting there, listening to the movements downstairs.  The door had been wide open since David unlocked it and started down the stairs to kill this sicko.  He had returned to the kitchen to think it out.  He was tired as he ran all the scenarios through his mind.  He considered that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning and thought about asking the psycho downstairs to order out Chinese food.  He tried to think up something that matched the insanity of his situation.  Instead, he just sat there.

Vic, Bill, Bob, or Jerry, or whatever his name was, came up the stairs at about 6:00PM.  David looked down at his wristwatch noticed the time.  Some time earlier, the watch had been entertainment for about ten minutes as he realized it was the only thing he had left of his old self.  That and the underwear he had on.  Both of which had been purchased by his wife. 

As Vic rounded the top of the stairs into the apartment, he appeared almost not to notice the door had been opened.  He looked like a man of low IQ.  Overweight.   Big hands.  White, sweaty, dirty, T-shirt.  Black jeans that were worn, and were much too tight.  His expansive gut hung over his belt.  A big head.  Too big for the medium height, but not too big for the weight.  He was a big, fat, ugly, slob.  He had no customers all day, and rightfully so.  This hunk of human slime couldn’t even sell porn.

Vic looked at the gold spiked hair, over-age, slacker at his kitchen table.  His gaze quickly went from the table to the open door of the bedroom.  His expression changed slightly, and it may have been David’s interpretation of some sign of guilt, rather than any change at all.
David stated softly, “Come here and sit down.  We need to talk.”

The slumping mass in the dirty white T-shirt moved towards the table, pulled out the chair and sat down.  He seemed unsure what to make of the white guy at his kitchen table.  Unlikely this guy was a cop.  Vic would have been busted long ago.  Not likely a pimp or a dope pusher.   But maybe.  Maybe hired privately?  Could be a gang member, upset with him for some reason.  The outfit and the hair matched a slacker, but the face didn’t.  The face was a bit dirty, but was much different than what he usually saw.  He didn’t know what to make of him.

“As I said, we need to talk.  You’ve got a body in the closet, and I want to know a few things.”

Still the slob didn’t move.  He was in no position to be offering explanations for the body.  He couldn’t deny it, and he still had no idea of who he was talking to.  As the yellow spiked hair middle age guy looked at him, he grew more nervous, and decided to go for it.

“I want a lawyer.”

“Not going to happen pal.”

The yellow haired guy never changed expression.  The burglar, fugitive, psycho, killer was way beyond getting riled.  He had a gun, the sloth didn’t.  He was a good guy, the sloth was not.  He was good, the sloth was bad.  There didn’t appear to be a two-way exchange necessary.

The sloth started to move up from his chair.  He may have been thinking of a fight, but that wasn’t going to happen.  David raised the barrel of the dark black liquidator above the table with the big empty black hole of the barrel pointing directly at the nose of the dirty sloth.  The sloth man sat back down and relaxed in the chair.  He seemed like just another guy who didn’t know what to say when confronted with a round black void with uncertainty behind it.

The slacker look alike decided to speak., “You have a computer.”

That hit a nerve.  Slothman suddenly looked nervous, and David thought he may have to shoot him right there.  He hit a nerve all right.  Just mentioning the computer made this really creepy guy squirm.  He didn’t look bad when he asked for a lawyer and he didn’t look bad when he found a guy at his table and the door to the room with a dead girl in it open.  But now he looked like he was going to pee his pants.

The sloth glanced at the closed closet door across the room, and then back at the trespasser.

“I did exactly what you said.  I never touched anything. Honest.  Nothing.”

“Tell me more.”

“I turned it on exactly at two last night and ten in the morning just like you said.”  I take the notes coming in each morning send them out each night, then wait for the paper, and do those times for the next night.  I always done it right.”

“Nothing else?”

“I use my own machines for the other shit.  I don’t touch your stuff.”

“What other shit, and what do you know of my stuff!”

The slacker look alike had raised the tone.  The knuckles were tighter on the gun handle.  He was probably spouting a vein on his forehead like Ashley said he did when he got mad.  That vein would be a lot like the one on Brian Tiernan’s head, if he wasn’t dead.

The sloth was scared, but he also looked angry.  His voice was rising, and it was unlikely this would hold much longer.

In a more forceful tone David demanded,  “What other shit, and what do you know of my stuff!”

The sloth retreated again.  “I get my shit off the net.  I watch your sites.  I tried to follow them but they make no sense to me!  I’m sorry!  I just like seeing dead kids.  I like it!”

Leaning back in the chair, back to the windows, soft yellow light through the shades coming over his shoulders, the slacker look-alike, fugitive killer asked softly but in a demanding manner.  ”Tell me what you know of dead kids. Names. Sites.  Everything.”

The sun was going down over the rooftops and the gray day grew grayer through the faded yellow shades.  The transformation of the room's lighting happened almost as rapidly as the expression on the face of the Slothman.  The fear that had caused him to tremble had instantly disappeared.  The trembling was still there but it had taken a different form.  The sloth’s upper lip started to move sideways, and furrows in his brow deepened.  The nervous hands on the table turned to angry fists, and the sloped shoulders lifted, as the sloth became a hulk of anger.

David was unsure of what he had done to loose the edge.  It wasn’t much of a stretch to presume the Slothman was a bit slow in head.  He feared the owner of the computer more than he did the police or anyone else, and David’s recent question was not exactly what the owner of the computer would have cared about.  If the sloth was afraid of that owner, it was the only thing keeping him in line.  Obviously, the computer had come with some pretty heavy threats, and the sloth now doubted the man before him was a representative of those threats.   The slacker held a gun, but that seemed to have little impact on the sloth.  David searched for a way out.

“What do you mean you tried to follow our site? That’s not part of the deal.”

Even David felt the threat was lame.  The Sloth’s fear was leaving, and anger was growing in him.  David watched the primate’s eyes drop to the hand holding the gun.  He seemed to have realized David was not a professional.  The big guys who ran the world had not sent the slacker look alike.  The sloth was getting angrier and was probably going to kill this guy.

The table flipped in an instant.  For an overweight, mental deficient, this creature moved fast.  As he bolted upright, his mammoth thighs caught the edge of the light wooden table, flipping it into the face of the slacker.  As the table flipped, the edge of it caught the slacker on the knees just as he attempted to stand to maintain balance with the sloth.  The bang on the knees, the flipping table, and the old wooden chair catching on the wooden floor, it all played on the tired fugitive who lost his balance as he threw his left hand out to grab something.  With feet backpedaling, his hand flailing, and his weight falling backwards, he was an easy target for the sloth who could easily give him a light push and send him through the kitchen window, out through the second floor.

The gun had been resting on the table, held lightly in the right hand of an amateur who was getting better at this gun thing.  He was a novice at this , but he  still managed to keep the barrel evenly balanced, with the large empty black void at the end of the barrel aligned right on the chest of the sloth.  He squeezed on the trigger, but not enough to set the gunpowder aflame and send a chunk of soft metal ripping through the chest of the beast.  He held back for an instant to see how the battle would play out. 

Yesterday David had moved from way beyond scared, and into the realm of madness.  He was now calculating, using the math of some type of deranged psychopath, and he didn’t want to attract attention with the loud hammer of a pistol shot echoing through the neighbor’s houses.  Though it was a tough neighborhood, he didn’t imagine they had an abundance of gunshots here, and someone was bound to call the police.

The decision not to fire was a good one.  The sloth had moved fast as well, but he was uncoordinated, large, and stupid.  The anger alone was almost enough to raise his blood pressure enough to pop his under-exercised heart, but the sudden movement, and the shift into the upright position, was too much for him.  He appeared to stumble for a moment, and it fact, he had blacked out for just an instant.  He staggered backward as well, and in an almost comical manor, proceeded to stumble over his chair and into the space heater which remained in the middle of the living room floor despite it being mid-summer.

David pushed off from the window seat, and was standing upright just in time to watch the falling table reveal a scene in which this clumsy monster tripped backwards over the space heater.

Without hesitation the slacker look alike lunged at the monster.  With gun in his right hand, he used his left and grabbed the monster’s chair from the floor, swung it over his head, and brought it crashing down on the forehead of the sloth who was still on his back, unable to calculate how to move his mass off the floor.

The impact of the chair was loud, but not as loud as the gun would have been, and not nearly as effective.  The sloth let out a grunt that was much louder than the breaking chair, and David worried it might have even have been louder than the gunshot would have been. 

Unfortunately, the grunt was not out of pain, but was more in line with the sloth’s version of a battle cry.  The shattered chair had almost no impact on the skull of the primate, and the remaining pieces of the chair dropped from the slacker’s hand like a useless weapon.  The sloth was now rolling himself over, to become as erect as a creature of his evolutionary standing could, and then he would attack.

The pistol in the right hand was now gripped with more tension, and the knuckles holding it were probably white.  It was quite possible the sloth would feel its impact very soon.  For an instant, there was almost a moment of pity in the slacker as he pondered whether this dangerous creature was even bright enough to remember that his assailant held a weapon that could make a large gaping hole through a refrigerator or even a car.  That moment of hesitation provided David with just enough time to plan his next move.  He grasped the metal safety cage of the space heater and swung the entire contraption over his head.

It had been an interesting weapon to choose, but appeared appropriate given the primitive creature he now battled.  If the sloth were to die, it appeared right that he be bludgeoned with an object rather that terminated with the precision of a modern weapon.  As David contemplated the use of the heater, many possibilities came into play.  The heater had a heavy base that looked as though it could hold a gallon or maybe a gallon and a half of kerosene.  That could weigh five to ten pounds alone. The rest of the heater was heavy metal as well, but would not add significantly to the weight.  Surrounding the heater was a heavy wire cage, almost perfect for grasping it and crashing it on someone’s head.  The cage was made of wire almost as thick as a pencil and was wrapped around it in two-inch squares that were just big enough to keep most objects from catching fire by contacting the burners inside.

Now timing, precision, and physics were everything.  The sloth was a moving object.  Slow, but moving.  The heater was in full swing and while not heavy, its movements were not as controllable, as say, a baseball bat.  With only one hand on it, and the other hand holding the backup weapon, stability was not what it should be.  The cage was bolted to the frame and David calculated it would hold through this maneuver.

The timing and accuracy were impeccable.  The investment banker moved with precision guiding the heater in a wide arch over his head for optimal impact.  It was important that the edge of the heater base where the seams were welded and thickest hit directly on the cranium.  Anything less would simply stun the victim momentarily with little lasting impact.  Throwing his weight into it, the edge of the heater base landed solidly on the back of the slug’s skull.

The heater made a crashing sound as it impacted on the creature’s skull.  It was loud, and it was unlikely the heater would ever work again. The stench of kerosene burst into the room as the heating elements shattered releasing a stream of liquid over the back and neck of the sloth.  The rest of the heater held up all right, but so did the sloth.

The impact had taken out the sloth for a moment, but its skull was thick and a single blow was not nearly enough to finish him off.  He would need at least one more volley.  The sloth’s movements were slowed, as hard as it was to slow down a sloth, and the heater rose up again.  The investment banker had checked the heater ever so briefly with a glance to assure it was still in good enough shape for sloth killing, and down it came onto the sloth’s head, once again with precision.

The heater bent this time, and it was unlikely the weapon would last through more than one or two more swings.  The smell of kerosene was now heavier than ever, as the liquid splashed all over the now slumped and motionless corpse.  David looked at the liquid and was grateful that the heater had not been on.  A spark would have lit up the sloth and the entire apartment.

The fugitive, killer, slacker-look-alike, break into apartments, fighter, drive a shitty car with stolen license plates guy, was looking down at the body of yet another victim.  The sloth had stopped moving, and blood oozed from the back of his head.  David didn’t bother to look for breathing, as he knew the sloth was still alive.  A couple of good blows would knock him out, but it was unlikely he was dead.  This moment of peace gave David the opportunity to plot his next move, and explore his surroundings.  The sloth would be up soon, and so he had to move quickly.

The video store was a masochists dream.  It was cluttered and dusty, yet actual salable merchandise was sparse.  It looked a bit like a sleazy type of back alley army navy store, with a slightly different collection of merchandise. 

One wall had shelves that contained erotic videotapes.   Some might consider them erotic, but the collection of biker chicks in leather and chains, and sloths wearing black leather garter belts and holding whips didn’t do much for the investment banker. He couldn’t even glance at the ones that had girls dressed like children.  On the other wall were hooks holding a variety of whips, chains, leathers, bondage equipment, and items that David was glad he didn’t know what they were for.

In the back was a cube with a single computer, and piles of paper on the desk.  The papers appeared to be bills and invoices, but there were order forms, and letters and Twinkie wrappers.  David wanted to look at the paperwork and the computer, but would need more time and would have to take care of the sloth first.

When the sloth awoke, he found himself in the bathtub.  He was wearing some of his own merchandise.  His hands were cuffed in front of him, the metal bracelets meant for women digging deep into the blubbery flesh around his wrists.  A chain connected the wrist shackles to the leg shackles that bulled a bar up under his knees with yet another pair of shackles binding his ankles.  The leather neck collar was chained to the plumbing fixtures that gave normal people hot and cold water for the tub.  The sloth would have looked funny in another time, but this was just plain sick.

When David had left him there, he imagined the sloth breaking free like the animal in King Kong knockoff films.  He had worried for an instant, but quickly realized that this creature would have had a hard time getting out of the tub with assistance let alone by himself and in shackles.  The sloth was going nowhere.

The desk contained client lists and names that would have meant nothing if not for addresses which now provided new leads.  The piles of bills and notices on the desk revealed an incompetent businessman who didn’t pay his bills on time and ignored warnings from suppliers and the utilities.  David began to ask himself how anyone could live like this, when thought occurred to him that the sloth had no problem sleeping in a home with a dead child in the closet.  The thought of the child began to haunt David and stop him from his task, until he turned it off and returned to his duties.

The computer was the work of the sloth.  It took nothing to locate contact names and addresses.  People he had sold to and bought from were listed like trophies.  He even had the dead girl listed.  With a picture.  Contact name eliminated.  There were three more pictures of children in this file.  All looked about the same, only younger.  David couldn’t look at any more.

Using a real deer leg letter opener found in the desk drawer, he unscrewed the side of the computer box, and removed the computer’s hard drive.  He couldn’t look at its contents anymore, but he knew some law enforcement folks who might make good use of it.

The sloth awoke and adjusted his eyes to make out the figure that stood in front of him.   It was the slacker.  The sloth hated him, and wanted to crush him, but right now he was at the slacker’s mercy.  The slacker stood over him, and the sloth felt no more vulnerable than he did any other day in his life.  He was a miserable creature who lived every day in fear.  Fearful of his creditors, the police, and the guys who owned the computer.  He had probably lived in fear of his mother, his father, his teachers and everybody else that met him and despised him for the disgusting creature he had become.  There may have been a reason for his descent into this despicable state, but that wasn’t relevant any more.  The sloth was who he was right now, and it was this sloth David would have to deal with.

“Can you see and hear me ok?  It’s important.  Your future depends on it.”

The sloth didn’t answer.  He stared.  Hatred flaring in his nostrils.

“I’m going to ask you some questions and you should think carefully about your answers.”

At this moment David wandered out of the room, leaving the bathroom door open, and walking over to the closet that held the computer of the powerful, sick men who controlled the network that now chased his friend Artie.

David remained within eyesight of the sloth, and with each step taken in the direction of the closet, the sloth grew more tense.  When  David opened the door the sloth nearly choked himself, trying to pull out of the collar that held him to the faucets.  Straining, he could see over the edge of the tub, and he was furious as David opened the closet, revealing a single table with a new laptop on it.  The sloth’s heart skipped as the slacker, killer, investigator, fugitive, gunslinger, typed TIMER OFF.

Looking up in horror the slacker spoke. “You shouldn’t have done nothing.  They’ll kill us both now.”

“I haven’t hit enter yet, and they won’t kill either one of us.  You see, I’ll be long gone, and you my friend….You will already be dead.”

The sloth looked at him with a bit of relief and yet curiosity.  He looked up as though he wanted to hear more of the story.  He had stopped straining, and was now looking for the slacker to finish telling the story.

“Yes you heard me right.  I am going to kill you.  There is no doubt about that.  What is in question is how I’m going to kill you and why.  You see, I am definitely going to kill you because of what I know you’ve done, and I might kill you a little slower and more painful for what I think you may have done or what you aren’t telling me.”

The sloth listened intently.  The slacker was a bit uncomfortable with this speech.  He didn’t like who he had become, but this wasn’t him anyway.  This was something else.  Something from a sci-fi movie that was stuck in hell looking for a way out.

“Tell me about the girl.”

“I didn’t kill her.  It was a gift. I didn’t kill her.”

It was hard to tell what was more disturbing.  The fact that he referred to this little dead girl as ‘it’ or that he said he referred to her as a gift.

“Who killed her and where did you get her from?”

“I don’t really know, and I can’t tell you anyway.  They’ll do worse to me than you can ever do.”

Sitting himself down lightly on the closed toilet seat, the slacker looked at him with a bit of pity.

“You still don’t understand, do you?  I’m going to kill you no mater what.”

Sitting back to assure the sloth couldn’t lunge at him again, the slacker continued. “You see, I am going to kill you. It’s just a matter of how painful it will be for you.  You don’t have to worry about what anyone else will do. ...You won’t be around to find out.  I’m giving you a chance to help me out, and to clear you conscience before you die.  I want to know who killed her, where I can find him, and anything else that might make your final hour a little less painful.”

The sloth looked at him with disgust.  There was a slight tinge of fear, but it was hatred mixed with an animal rage.  David pulled the big black pistol from him rear of his belt, and laid it on the sink counter, well out of the reach of the sloth.  It was then that the psycho killer, father, fugitive pulled out a package of matches from his top pocket and lit the candle on the sink.  The lit candle brought the sloth an awakening,  releasing the sudden awareness that he was covered in kerosene. 

The face of fear appeared on the sloth again.

Without an air of cockiness, self-righteousness, or remorse, the killer spoke, “Yes.  That’s right.  Emptied the entire container on you.  Must be a gallon and a half of kerosene on you and in the tub.”

The sloth hadn’t even noticed the smell until that moment.

“You see, I’ve lost my daughter, and I’m pretty much out of my mind.  My guess is, if I get arrested for everything I did in the past two days, I’d probably get off on an insanity plea, and maybe, given what I’ve done, get a metal of honor or something.  I don’t want you to think you’re the only one.  You’re not all that special.  There’s a lot of sick dudes like you in the world, actually I’m amazed at how many there are.”

With that the slacker held up the computer printed list and the list made by Sandy.

“You see, some of those who felt a little bad about what they did, helped me out a bit.  Others didn’t go so peacefully.”

He felt a little guilty about twisting the truth, but it was true.  Sandy had given him a list and died peacefully, while Brian was unrepentant, and had his innards splattered all over the place.

David looked deep into the sloth’s eyes. “Tell me what you can.  Make it easy on me and you, and maybe do something good for the world before you go.”

“FUCK YOU!” Growled the sloth.
Again, with little emotion, the killer spoke softly, “Bad decision. Shithead.”

With that, David picked up the month old newspaper that was sitting in the sink and set it afire in the candle.

Again the sloth used his masterful vocabulary.  “FUCK YOU!”

The killer continued to speak softly with no harshness in his words, nor was there any compassion.  “One last chance.  I have no problem with this, but I’d rather have answers.”

A little softer, but still with all the force a mental deficient could muster to attack his executioner, “Fuck You!”

The burning paper landed on his stomach of the kerosene soaked man.  Both David and the sloth watched it for a moment.  The kerosene didn’t light up like gas would, and for a moment David thought it might be so old it would not burn and he would just have to get up and shoot the disgusting creature.  The sloth looked at the burning paper with concern and David imagined him looking up and laughing, ‘ha! It didn’t work!’  But that didn’t happen.  The sloth looked concerned.  He looked more concerned as the belt loop on his pants gently caught fire, and little flames began erupting from his t-shirt.

The flames spread rather rapidly, but still slow compared to gasoline, and David felt a little bad that the sloth would be a human candle, burning slowly.  This would be painful and ugly, and he was not so hardened that he could watch.  He would get no pleasure from this, and it wouldn’t help him find his daughter.  So he stood up and started out the door.

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

David walked into the living room, the bathroom door to his back.  The black handgun hung by his side.  He felt bad.   The man had not talked, and there was no sense putting him through this much pain for nothing.  He would not get anything from him and this death would bring David no sadistic pleasure.  He looked to the bedroom and saw a pillow on the bed.

            Passing the bedroom closet where the girl’s body lay, he turned his head so he couldn’t see her.  David was starting to think more like a human again, and couldn’t bear that sight.  He picked up the pillow and headed toward the bathroom slowly. 

He could see the shadows of flames bouncing of the walls, and knew that inside, a man was on fire.  There was no sound from the bathroom.  David was the creature now.  The beast.  The monster.  He was justifying his killing.  He even justified the torture that he was inflicting right now. He had started this insanity with a thought that he was being logical.  That this would somehow help.  He couldn’t justify it any longer.  He had to go in and kill him now.  Had to kill him. 

He listened to his own narration.  How sick he was justifying shooting a man in the head.  He looked up toward the bouncing shadows of flames.  He could not see the man himself or the killing flames, and would have to walk in to do that, but he didn’t want to.

“Marcel Richards!  Marcel Richards!  540 Fifth Ave!  540 Fifth Ave.  49C!  49C!  Marcel Richards! 540! 49C!, …New York”

It was a horrible sound, and David pictured the sloth sucking in flames as he screamed.  At first, he couldn’t move.  He was a monster, and he couldn’t face this until…until he became someone else again. 

What he did made sense.  It worked.  It could help get rid of scum, and it might help him find his daughter.  He wrapped the pillow around his right hand and the precision killing device held in it.  Men had invented these cold hard machines for just such a cause, it seemed odd it would be delivered from inside a soft pillow.  He turned the corner to look into the eyes of the dying man, but saw only a smoldering black beast with eyes shut, writhing in pain.  Flames slowly burning everywhere.  He raised the pistol and pulled the trigger three times, with feathers erupting from the pillow. 

David hit the enter key on the closet computer, walked downstairs, and headed out the front door of VICS, with a computer drive in his pocket, and a the name of Marcel Richards burned in his mind.  240 Broadway, Apartment 49C