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Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter Nine

A Hint of Remorse

Chapter 9 – A Hint of Remorse

The murderer was now driving the high tech Audi through the East Village, hoping to find somewhere to leave the car where it would be left alone for days, or better yet stripped till it didn’t look like a car any more.  Getting rid of the gun and the cloths was easy.  He had followed a garbage truck doing the late night trash pickup, and had got to the next trash bin before the ‘sanitary engineers’.  He watched as the big trucked placed huge spikes under the green bin, picking it up with its large garbage bag that contained a box that contained a bag, that contained blood covered clothing and towels.  He watched as the truck pulled the bin over its roof, dumped the load into the compactor, and crushed it into a nice little package that would be on a barge heading for burial at sea miles off the coast where these strange humans believed they could dump trash forever, without harming anything.  People are so stupid.

The gun was easy to dispose of.  He thought it would be difficult to break the gun apart, to assure the FBI could never fire it and match it to the little scraps of lead he had tossed in the toilet at the dead guy’s house.  The gun came apart so easy.  David was sure he would need a vice to crush it and bend it, but it broke as he twisted it in a hole in the old green trash bin.  The barrel bent, and the rest of it just fell apart.  He walked by the East River, in a park next to the FDR Drive, dumping the pieces into the water.  Further down he dumped the pieces of the bullets.  He had broken them apart as well.  Maybe to cover his tracks, or maybe just to have something to do.

Oh the fugitive tried to act smart hoping to hide even the possibility of tracing the lead to that in the home of the dead man.  But, what really bothered the fugitive was his lack of disguise, the fact that he was at a park near the East River where nearly nobody lived and nobody was out and about at this hour, and that there could be cameras almost anywhere in this over protected city.  He could see cameras pointing at building entrances and parking garages, and he stayed away from them.  But it’s the ones he couldn’t see that scared him. Like the ones that may have watched him dump the gun in the river.

Queens was a great place to leave the getaway car.  David felt bad leaving it.  Not because it was so nice a car, or that it was Artie’s, or that it was just a matter of money.  It was sad to loose his only friend.  The car was the only one who knew the whole story.  The car had seen or felt what went on in the apartment.  The car knew he was just looking for his daughter and the car had listened as he drove in silence through dark streets.  That’s what a good friend does.  They listen without saying a word.  The car understood why it was being left, and didn’t seem to have any objection to being left next to what remained of an old Lincoln.  It was good to deal with inanimate objects.  They had no feelings or emotions, and never complained.  Kind of like the numbers at work.  The stripped Lincoln was a good sign that the Audi would find a new life as parts for a hundred other cars.

            The cab ride was a bit weird, carrying the peculiar case Artie had left in the trunk.  That’s all the fugitive had now.  A high tech cell phone that couldn’t be traced, and a brief case full of money.  He gave the cabbie a two dollar tip, much less extravagant than the big tip on the first ride.  He didn’t want to be recognized this time.

The sun had gone down, and SoHo was alive this time of night.  As a cool place next to Greenwich Village, odd was in and the stranger looking someone was, the less likely they were to be noticed.  David had no trouble buying some pretty strange cloths, getting his hair cropped and colored, and getting a room paid for with cash.  Of course the clothes were weird to the investment Banker, but totally normal in this neighborhood.  He bought a few outfits, mainly from the vintage shops.  He kinda liked the look, and it felt good to buy something he absolutely knew nobody was forcing him to. His wife usually shopped for him. Anyways, all the mainstream shops were closed.  The national retailers where his wife typically bought his cloths were long since closed. 

The shops that remained open were occupied by owners that liked what they wore and were happy to be at work, late at night, talking with friends, and being who they wanted to be.  David was sure they felt ok about who they were, but he also knew that they would trade any day for his life.  At least his life up until this morning.  His wife, kids, cars, house, swimming pool, American Express card, the sky miles that took him to Hawaii, and the paychecks that make it all possible.  They may think they like what they have, but if they could trade it all right now, he’d bet they’d go for the dough.

            The killer never made it back to the apartment.  He needed wheels, and he needed to talk to Artie.  And in that order.  He didn’t want to call Artie and talk outside where he could be heard.  He needed privacy, and a car was perfect.  How to get one without getting caught?  He felt like a teen delinquent now.  He had enough cash on him to buy a new Bentley, but he wanted an old Jetta, preferably rusting, and missing hubcaps.

The killer was walking uptown when the phone rang.   Scared the piss out of him. 

“Artie?” 

“Yeah... It's me.”

“Where are you?  I got so much shit off that thing than even I can’t process it all.  I have to keep this really tight, but I got a couple of really good guys who are used to seeing shit their not supposed to see.  You know, the kind of guys that end every sentence with, ‘Then I’d have to kill ya’.  Only these guys mean it.  I got a dozen of them on this”

David interrupted Artie, “What’s up?  I’m not up for fooling or getting excited about war games.”  The newly indoctrinated murderer was tense.  He wasn’t happy and was in no mood for sarcastic small talk made to make him chuckle.  He needed something to keep his mind off of what he had just done.

The fugitive had nearly forgotten about the original reason for his quest.  All he could think of was the dead guy and hiding out from the cops.  He thought of his daughter, but not of getting her back.  He was pretty sure it was too late for that, and he didn’t want to think about it.  She was dead already.  He would never see her again.  In a day or two Kelly would begin to break down.  She’d realize there would be no ransom request from anybody but wackos.  They would never catch the creeps, and she would never ever know what happened to little Ashley.  He would have to be there.  He could do nothing.  He felt like shit.   And now he was a killer.  The cops would spend weeks questioning him about who took her, any enemies, yada, yada, yada.  And every day from now to forever, he would wonder if they ever found the dead guy in apartment 3A, and if they had a hair sample from the killer, if they had DNA evidence, if someone saw the guy who got into the Audi.  He was freaking out, again.

“Heads up.  This shit’s creepy.    Real creepy.  The guy whose machine you hooked into was some kind of employee or something for something really big.  The data on his machine gave us some leads that are interesting but I can’t do much with it.  It’s like there is a community of bad guys that all have to be on at once to get the info they are spreading.  I think it’s kinda like some cult, only I think these guys are like paid employees for something much bigger, and that Tiernan guy isn’t Tiernan at all.  Tiernan is dead.”

“No shit!”

“Really….  Tiernan died in 94. The guy stole his identity.  I don’t know who he is but we matched him to a whole shitload of low quality porn.   Looks like he’s been a bouncer and a bodyguard for some thugs that eventually went up river, but died shortly after getting settled in the State pen.  Good thing he wasn’t in the apartment.  Guy probably would have killed ya.” 

Oh yeah!  “Unless he died first.” 

“What? 

“Nothin'.”

“At any rate.  I think Ashley is still alive.  I hate to sound so cold, but I kinda thought it was too late by the time the TV and fax shit went out.  But here’s the thing.   I think these guys sell and trade people.  They seem to make a ton of money off porn, but they’re burning it all up buying expensive equipment and guys to run it.  They have great stuff.  Not as good as mine, but much better than the Feds.  Every time I get into something. They’re changing encryption and moving data.  It’s like their systems alive.  They have to have people working it all the time.  They gotta have at least a couple of machines running at a time to do anything.”

If life could get any stranger it just had.  David’s reality was so far out there, anyone in it would feel insane.  Then zoning out from where he really was, to laying in a pool of blood next to a dead guy, then in bed reading stories to a little girl, and then back again on the phone with a computer geek who ruled the cyber world.

“Did you say you think Ashley is alive?”

Couldn’t be.  Must have imagined he said it.

David’s adrenaline boost dropped a bit.  “What’s the bottom line?"

“This may be weird, but it looks like somebody placed an order for a kid like yours.  I got descriptions, pictures, catalogues of kids, all kinds of scary shit, but the really scary thing is this.  Your address was in their files.”

Reality changed again.  From the adrenaline rush, to the search, the kill, and now, scumbags in his house.  Maybe not in his house, but he had been pegged for this.  This was no accident.  He had been set up and attacked.  Though he knew he wasn’t the target, his family was.  This was a war.  The lousy father, distant husband, workaholic, had been pegged for a war.  People had been attacked, and at least one guy had died.  The good guys were winning on the body count, but the bad guys had a prisoner.  He would have lost the war an hour after it started, if not for a weird friend who gave him an advantage the bad guys had not predicted.  The good guys were still loosing.  The bad guys had lost a man, and that really didn’t matter to them.  They had what they wanted, with only one casualty.

Getting the prisoner back was now the only objective.  The only way the prisoner would be released is through an exchange, or in return for a cessation of hostilities.  The bad guys would clearly have to be loosing to make an exchange.  They would have to be loosing bad, and they would have to be sure, the victors would not be pursuing them to their sleazy hideaway.  An all out war was imminent.  The bad guys are rich, powerful, and obviously beyond caring about the law.  The good guy was a nobody, but he had a powerful ally that was rich, powerful, smart, and pretty much operating above the law from wherever he was.  As usual, the good guys had God on their side.

The bad dream was becoming a game.  A strategy.  All the different players were coming into place, and the game board was taking shape.  The wife and remaining kids, job, friends, family, and work, all determined how big of a playing field existed.  A definite disadvantage.  Bad guys rarely win in the movies, but they could if they had even average intelligence or sanity.  You see, the good guys have a huge disadvantage.  They care about something other than winning.  They have families, and a home.  Friends, places they remember, and good times they don’t want to loose. 

In every war, the civilians and the little people are the ones who die, while the generals, politicians and presidents live on after the war in big houses with nice gardens.  The loosing generals go off in shame to some tropical retreat with the millions they’ve looted, while the winning generals get paid to make politically correct speeches reaching awestruck ears with dribble about how glorious it was and the sorrow they feel for the victims.  This, like all other wars, was a war that was unlikely to have any happy ending.  Life would never be the same, and one civilian death was way too many.

“Artie.  I need you to do something”

David was in a car again.  Yet another supplied by the computer God.  David wondered how many cars Artie had in New York alone.  He wondered what Artie would think if he knew a spiked hair, slacker, killer was driving around in yet another one of his Audis.  The Audi would have been a bit scary, but this time it was black.  No mistaking it for the silver one some killer drove off in a couple of hours ago.

The killer was tired.  This had been a bit of a tough day, and he was driving around Manhattan somewhat aimlessly as the sun was rising.  The traffic hadn’t started yet.  It was going to be a beautiful Sunday morning.  The paper might carry the story of the kidnapped child from Connecticut.  And it might also carry the story of the father who lost it.  The guy who killed someone in a little apartment in the lower west side.  The killer needed a diversion, and the early morning radio might provide some for a moment or two.

“Witnesses reported seeing a man who matched the description of the missing child’s father leaving an apartment building in lower Manhattan late last evening.  Sources say that this man was seen leaving the building shortly before the discovery of the body of an unidentified white male.  Police are looking for David Knapp, and believe he may still be located in the New York area.  Police are requesting all leads be called into a special 1 800 number, and are warning that this man should not be approached and should be considered armed and dangerous.”

The radio was not a good idea, but he turned it on anyway.  No news headlines, and he didn’t bother changing the channel.  He already had a news story in mind.  In the background David would listen to this not so funny guy trying to take up airtime by making jokes by himself in some little studio.  In between the humorless humor, he would hit a tape that spewed out music he probably hated, but that some marketing company had identified with the demographics they were trying to reach so they could get some advertising agency to give them money to brainwash listeners into buying things they didn’t really need.  That DJ’s life must really suck for him to be wishing he were at work.  Maybe he wasn’t really into it, but instead was having increasingly more realistic daydreams about breaking into an apartment and blowing a big hole in the middle of some guy he had never met.

David was flipping out and needed a place to crash.  The luncheonette worked for now.  He stared at another of Artie’s high tech phones sitting on the table.  He was willing it to ring but at the same time dreading the outcome.  Sitting next to the phone was a carafe of orange juice and a plate of pancakes, scrambled eggs and toast.  He imagined himself in a TV movie as the father who was unable to sleep or eat.  Fading away, looking scraggly, unshaven, overweight, and slowly dying.

He chewed into the food like he hadn’t eaten in days.  It tasted great.  Yeah right.  He wished it, but it would have tasted like cardboard if he could taste it at all.  Nothing seemed to have any real flavor, feel, or color.  He was tired.  He was inhuman.

He could get a beautiful room and crash out.  No problem.  He had money. Lots of it. He could sleep for a day or two.  He would dream.  Lousy dreams, but they couldn’t be worse than reality.  He would dream of a little girl crying as some slug snuffed out her life.  He would dream a thousand different ways it would happen, all with her tears and screams.  When that got to be too much, he would dream of blasting big holes in people with a gun he got from stranger. 

He would kill bad guys at first, but that would change to bystanders, and then obviously innocent people.  He would move on to killing some cop who had a four year old son at home and a pregnant wife.  And finally he would see himself busting into a room filled with psycho killer, child capturing perverts, and pulling the trigger, and accidentally blowing away his own daughter.

How could the nightmares be any worse than reality?  In a dream they would be a dream and he would know it.  Here some of these nightmares were true.  Some were true and some were in his mind. Almost true.  Some of these horrors had already happed, some were going to happen and some… he didn’t know if they were real or not.  He didn’t want to go to work.  He wanted to sleep.

The timing was impeccable.  The phone rang as he left the greasy little shop.  It was nearly six o’clock, and the sun was rising, and people were starting to emerge from their shelters.  The killer was getting an update from his connection.