In the Shadow of Sadd

In the Shadow of Sadd - By Steen Langstrup




FM 112,8 MHz

Steen Langstrup


There is always a unique atmosphere in the car when you drive through the City with a dead body in the back. It’s slightly oppressive, a kind of heavy silence. The low purring sound from the engine’s eight cylinders and the rhythm of the windshield wipers lie just beneath the silence, as though covered with a blanket. You are alone, and yet not completely alone.

Bruno Hanson stops at a red light and checks the side-view mirror. The blue taxi behind him signals to make a right turn. He releases his grip on the wheel and runs a hand through a head of hair as short as beard stubble. He taps out a beat on the steering wheel.

The body is hidden under a dark-blue blanket. There are windows in the back of the van, but if anyone looked, they wouldn’t see anything but a shapeless heap covered with a blue blanket. And besides, this is the City and people tend to mind their own business.

If he lifts a corner of the blanket, he’ll see that the skin of the body is turning blue as the blood ebbs inward, now that the heart can no longer circulate it through the body. No pulse, no breathing. The eyes do not move beneath the lids. There is no life. That’s death. It’s not the first time Bruno has moved a dead body in his old Chevy van. He’s a pro, and if you work for Jimmy Sadd, this is how it is. He knows that the body is still warm to the touch. A body cools down fairly slowly, and he’s got the heater going full blast to slow down the rigor mortis, so the body won’t stiffen before he can get rid of it.

He recalls the first time Jimmy Sadd asked him to move a dead body. He had been Jimmy’s driver for a couple of months at that time. He drove Jimmy and his little wife around for opening nights, galas and that kind of thing in Jimmy’s pink limo. The limo was blown up by the Latvian mafia in the harbor about four years ago. Jimmy didn’t get hit by the explosion, but he decided to keep a low profile for a while. So, no limos. Bruno was given other jobs and he now had more responsibility in the organization, although people still call him the Driver.

That night in the pink limo, Jimmy said that he had to talk to a guy he’d just spotted on the sidewalk. At the time it seemed like a coincidence, but Bruno now knows that there aren’t too many coincidences in the life of Jimmy Sadd. The guy was a little prick of a dealer – hooded sweatshirt, frightened eyes, fast talk – none of which did him any good.

He had cheated Jimmy, and the score was settled on the spot. Jimmy shot him right there, in the limo. He leaned over toward Bruno and said, “Down in midtown they’re building this big forty-six story place for Cheet Insurance. They work around the clock. They’re working on the foundation right now. They’re expecting you. Take our dead friend down there. Ask for Franz. He’ll take care of it. Now, take me to the theater. The mayor’s waiting.”

Bruno did as he was told. That’s what you do, that’s the way it is. But there had been a traffic accident down by the stadium and Bruno was caught in traffic. It should have taken him about thirty minutes to get to the building site after he had dropped Jimmy off at the theater. It ended up taking two hours and fifteen minutes. Alone in Jimmy’s pink limo, with a dead body in the back seat. Bruno felt hot – he was sweating buckets. The paranoia started to hum in his body as the line of cars inched forward. Though he had turned the air conditioning all the way up, his clothes were still soaked when he got to the building site and finally found Franz, who was upset because the cool air from the air conditioning had sped up the rigor mortis. The body was stiff as a board. It isn’t easy to remove a dead body from a limo when it’s frozen in a sitting position.

Now Bruno is sweating again, but it’s not just from the heater. Usually, everything is planned. He knows where to take the body, who to hand it over to, and so on. But this time there is no plan at all. He has to work it all out by himself. There wasn’t even supposed to have been a body. Sadd is in jail for the next couple of months. There’s nobody left to plan anything. Bruno is all alone.

What the hell is he supposed to do with the body? He could dump it into the harbor, but the sun will be up soon, lighting the scene for the morning rush hour traffic. Some old broad might call the cops if she saw a big guy dumping a body in the water while she was walking Fido. And the cops don’t like Jimmy the way they once did. Besides, the harbor belongs to the Latvians.

He’ll have to think of something. But it’s hard to think when you have a dead body in the car. It’s hard when you can sense the soul, or whatever it is, shifting around back there. You are not entirely alone.

Bruno takes a quick look at the body behind him before turning on the radio.

***

This is Alley-Cat Jack on your number-one radio station. Numero uno. You know which one that is: Radio Fake, 112.8 MHz on your FM dial.

To all of you who are still awake, the party isn’t over. The sun’s on its way up, even though you can’t see it through the clouds. It’s real late, but stay up just a little while longer. To all you wage slaves like myself, let me wish you a good morning on yet another rainy day. The view, from where I’m sitting, is several shades of gray. Overcast and wet. There’s some congestion on the northbound lanes of the E triple 6. Something about an overturned truck.

I remembered something, a while ago, as I was sitting here watching the rain. When I was a little boy, I thought it was God and the angels peeing when it rained. An image that pretty much sums up life here in the City, I think.

You know that feeling?

Then give me a call. The phones are open.

***

Bruno Hanson was 25 when Jimmy Sadd visited him at his home.

“I hear you’re pretty tough.”

“Who said that?”

“If you’re as tough as your brother George, I might have some work for you.”

“I’m doing okay.”

“I need a driver.”

“I don’t have a license.”

George is five years older than Bruno. They’re only half-brothers – same mother, never had any contact with the fathers. The mother lived off a disability pension and spent the better part of their childhood in a pill haze, in front of the TV. In a neighborhood where it wasn’t at all uncommon to hear gunshots at night, the boys were left to fend for themselves. They did so by joining a gang, the Spiders, that sold hash and speed in the nearby schools by day, and fled from the police in boosted cars by night. Bruno was sixteen years old when he was charged in the killing of a rival Turkish gang member. He was convicted of murder in the first degree. At the age of twenty-five, his training as a criminal all but complete, he was granted parole. He was ready to start his career, and Jimmy Sadd knew it.

***

“You’re talking to Alley-Cat Jack, so spit it out!”

“Hello, my name’s Noah.”

“Hi, Noah. Is your mother religious?”

“Not really. How do you mean – what are you getting at?”

“Nothing, forget it. What’s on your mind, Noah?”

“I found this fantastic restaurant out by the bridge where you can get EVERYTHING. Yesterday I had an ostrich omelet with babirusa bacon for my appetizer, and wait till you hear what I had for the main course! Tapir steak, lightly seasoned, with couscous and a little chili. It was unbelievable. I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

“Uh, tapir is an endangered species, Noah. There’s only a few hundred left in the world.”

“Exactly, that’s what made it so fantastic. You have to taste it while you still can!”

“Foreign food isn’t really my thing. I tasted whale once, and I was sick for a week.”

***

Bruno turns off the radio, as he deliberately refrains from staring into the rear-view mirror at the police car that has just swung in behind him. No need to draw attention. If they stop him with a dead body in the back, he’s f*cked.

Most cops can be bribed – it’s just a question of the amount. But regardless of the amount of grease, there’s no way around the fact that the greasing itself has to be take place before the deed is done, whatever that deed may be. Afterwards, it’s pretty much impossible. If you’re busted in the middle of everything, the cops will think that you tried to keep them out of it, and they don’t like that.

Besides, these are new times, since the cops themselves have become more active in the gray zones. Jimmy Sadd is inside for a trivial matter because they wanted him out of the way, so they could expand their operations in the area around the old vegetable market, where Sadd had guaranteed the safety of the hawkers for years. It’s police turf now. A protection racket.

He’s stuck in a red wave. Every single traffic light turns red just before he reaches it. He can’t do anything about it. With the cops right behind him, he can’t drive any faster, or use the carpool lane. He can’t take any chances, so he stops for a red light again now. He tries not to steal a glance at the rear-view mirror, as he wonders where to dump the body. Eventually he relents and steals a glance at the side mirror. There’s a female cop behind the wheel, and a slightly older man next to her, with the classic policeman’s mustache.

***

The rain is drumming down on the roof of the van. The City is waking up. A large, orange street sweeper rumbles through the intersection as a paperboy tosses a stack of newspapers onto the sidewalk outside the corner kiosk. The street lamps go out. In the back a cell phone rings. The body’s cell phone. It must be in the trouser pocket. It rings four times before finally going quiet. A pearl of sweat trickles down Bruno’s cheek.

Bruno fishes out his own cell from his jacket pocket and looks at it as he weighs the pros and cons. But he can’t call now – not with the cops on his ass.

He’s ripped away from his thoughts when the cops suddenly begin to beep their horn angrily behind him. Green, for Christ’s sake. He tosses the cell onto the passenger seat, puts the Chevy in gear and starts through the intersection.

He tries to tell himself that everything’s cool, but his heart is beating a little harder and faster than normal. He has his new Walther automatic pistol in the glove compartment. No serial number, untraceable. But it’s his own van. So easy does it. There’s no way to shoot your way out of this one. They’d be waiting for him in his apartment. Maybe they’d rummage through his belongings and drink his vodka. But he’d be busted before he knew what hit him. He has to stay cool. He’s a professional.

Red again. He pulls into the left lane and signals. The police car rolls up along his right side. He can only catch a glance of the blue emergency lights through his side window. He taps on the steering wheel again, then fiddles with his cell.

It startles him when the cops turn on the siren, and the lights on the roof of the police car start blinking blue. He drops the phone, which falls to the floor of the van and out of sight. With tires screeching, the police car makes a right at the intersection and disappears down a side street.

Bruno curses. Clenching his teeth, he rocks around in his seat, looking for the cell phone on the floor of the van. The light turns green, and some moron in a black Nissan honks at him, waving his middle finger back and forth across the windshield. The Chevy coughs, seizes up and dies. It won’t start. And the dead body in the back is just lying there, silent but obtrusive, as he turns the ignition again and again and hears the starter whirl around without the engine turning over. It’s the moisture. The old Chevy doesn’t approve of all this rain. He tries again. The sweat is now running off his nose in big, round droplets. The van finally kicks over. He hits the gas and moves up a little, but by now the light has changed again, and the cross traffic is about to move. There is more honking, more shouting, more people giving the finger, but at last he makes his left and moves on.

He just follows the traffic for the next few minutes, without having any idea where he’s going, and without thinking. Slowly his stress level begins to fall. He spots the cell on the floor next to his right foot. He leans forward and grabs it, then pushes a couple of buttons and lifts the phone to his ear.

“This is Helena,” a husky voice mumbles.

“Bruno. Is George there?”

“God damn, Bruno. You know how late it is? What’s wrong with you?”

“Just wake him up, for f*ck’s sake! I’m in some deep shit here, you understand?”

“Don’t you call here and start ordering me around, Bruno.”

“Helena. Just listen to me. I’m on my way to your place. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Wake up George and tell him I’m coming, okay?”

“He isn’t here.”

“What?”

“He. Is. Not. Here.”

Bruno rubs his face with his hand. “Then where is he?”

“F*ck if I know, Bruno. Does he ever tell me anything? Down at the garage maybe.”

“This early?” He pulls the van up to the curb outside a leather shop. The mannequin in the window is a nun with nipple clamps and a whip in her hand.

“The phone rang last night. I think he said something about water damage at the workshop. I don’t know, I was sleeping. Which is what I’d be doing right now if you hadn’t called and woke me up.”

“Water damage?”

“Yeah.”

He hangs up and rests his head on the steering wheel. George isn’t going to be happy about this.

“F*ck! F*ck, F*ck, F*ck!” he shouts and flings the phone down to the floor. George will not be pleased when he turns up outside the workshop with a dead body, while George is running back and forth with pots and pans, as the rain drips through the roof, destroying a fortune’s worth of tools and machinery.

There’s a knock on the window. Bruno lifts his head and sees a man outside in a rain jacket and sou’wester, like a fisherman. “Are you ill?” he shouts with a worried look.

Bruno just stares at him. A paperboy, his papers hidden in great saddlebags mounted to his bicycle, with green flaps to protect them from the rain. The expression in his eyes – he’s one of those hero types who takes a first-aid course and then storms around looking for someone to save.

“I’m okay.”

“You sure? You looked like you needed help.”

“Piss off, huh?” Bruno snatches the cell up off the floor. “Get lost.”

“It’s just ...”

Bruno turns away from him and dials the number to George’s garage.

The man once again knocks on the window.

“WHAT?!”

“Your phone is broken.”

Bruno turns the phone in his hand. How could he not have noticed? The entire back of the phone had been knocked off, and was still resting on the floor of the van, along with the battery and the SIM card.

“Yeah, I know.” He gestures as if to say, ‘I know what I’m doing,’ maybe even with the hint of a smile. Then he gathers the phone cover, battery and SIM card and tries to reassemble the phone. But the cover is cracked, and no matter how he rearranges the chip, it won’t stay put. The battery doesn’t seem to fit at all.

“Allow me,” the paperboy says as he opens the door. Before Bruno can refuse, the man has snatched the pieces, inserted the SIM card and pushed the battery into place. “The cover is cracked, but if you’re careful, you can still use it.”

Bruno just stares back at the paperboy. “So he gets to save the day after all,” he thinks to himself. “F*ck, some people are so determined to be good that it makes me want to puke.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles, taking the cell out of the paperboy’s hand while putting the car into gear. “I’m kind of busy.”

“That’s okay. I’m just glad I could help.”

Bruno slams the door shut and hits the gas. He has to wait a few seconds while a large garbage truck rumbles by, then he swings all the way around and heads off in the opposite direction. George’s garage is located in the other end of the City.

He pushes a few buttons on the cell, but it won’t turn on. “Just glad I could help. F*ck me ... and the damn thing doesn’t even work.” He tosses it on the passenger seat and steals a glance at the dead body in the back, covered by the dark-blue rug.

***

“You’re talking to Alley-Cat Jack, what’s on your mind, Angelica?

“Angelina. My name is AngeliNA.”

“Okay, sorry. AngeliNA, what’s on your mind?”

“Advertising, Jack. I am so sick and tired of being bombarded with naked women all the time. Wherever you look. Boobs, boobs, boobs. Butts, butts, butts.”

“I’ve been bombarded by worse things.”

“Maybe, but we have to think of the children. They get this twisted impression of women – they see them as these lustful sex bombs with enormous breasts. It’s bad for the kids, Jack. The advertising industry ought to be held accountable. We have to fight against ...”

“Angelina. This is an ad-financed radio station. Let me just underline that the opinions expressed here on the program do not necessarily reflect the positions of myself or Radio Fake.”

“You sold out to them, Jack!”

“Maybe, but there could be a valid reason for using scantily clad women in advertisements.”

“How about the new commercial for Kissies Cat Food?”

“Oh, right. ‘Please your puss.’ Good motto.”

“It’s disgusting. And what do naked breasts have to do with a commercial for cat food?”

“Cats drink milk.”

“I think it’s time for us feminists to up the ante. Those advertising fascists aren’t going to listen until they feel a little pain themselves. I suggest that we form an underground feminist army that ...”

“What about you, Angelina? Do you have large breasts?”

***

The rain beats down on George’s Mustang, parked outside the garage. There are three other cars, as well: a fire-engine red Escort with a pink teddy bear dangling underneath the rear-view mirror, a dented Impreza and a station wagon of some sort. Bruno pulls in behind the Mustang and kills the engine. The windows of the garage’s four entrances emit a faint yellow light. Two of them are large enough to hold tractor trailers. George is doing well for himself. Bathed in the blue glint of a blowtorch, Bruno glimpses a truck behind one of the entrances, and a couple of figures moving around it.

Bruno hops out of the Chevy and jogs through the rain to the gateway. There’s an ordinary door alongside the gate. He opens the door.

“Bruno?” George gestures him in. In the place of his right hand, which he lost when Jimmy Sadd’s limo exploded, George has a claw made up of two steel ‘fingers’ he moves with the help of the muscles in his arm. Or something like that. Bruno has never really figured out how George is able to do it. And he isn’t about to ask.

“Helena told me you were here. I don’t see any water damage ...”

George laughs. “Only stupid men tell women everything. What’s up? Been a while. What can I do you for?”

There’s a truck in the middle of the work space. A refrigerated truck from D.R. Rea Fast Food. There are small puddles of rainwater underneath the trailer. The interior of the refrigerated trailer is buzzing with activity.

“I need your help.”

George shakes his head. “Bruno, I haven’t seen you for ... what, three months? I turned thirty-six a couple of weeks back. Did you call to wish me a happy birthday? Did you send a card?”

“Shit, George, I’m sorry about that. I’ve been ...”

“Last time you showed up, what was it you wanted?”

Bruno offers a meager smile, but doesn’t reply.

“Your Chevy Dinosaur needed a new front fender, because you ran somebody down, so you show up here. But otherwise ...”

“I know, George. It’s been really crazy. Sadd’s inside and the cops are all over us.”

“I’m done with Jimmy. I don’t have the nerves for that kind of work anymore. I’m still taking my pills every day. Zoloft, Ambien, benzos ...”

Bruno nods. He knows. The only reason George was driving Sadd’s limo the day the Latvians blew it up was that he had a strong immune system. The Latvians used a connection in Sadd’s own organization to place a bomb in the limo. A time bomb, and had it been any other ordinary Wednesday, it would have exploded while Bruno was driving Sadd’s little girls home from school. A particularly vicious bout of acute gastroenteritis saved their lives. While Sadd, his tiny little wife and the girls were setting distance records in projectile vomiting, as was Bruno, George – one of the few in the gang who hadn’t caught the bug – had gone out to wash the limo, just to help pass the time. He was washing the back wheels when the whole thing exploded. He lost his hand and was pretty much shell-shocked. The hand was replaced with the claw, but George was never really himself again. He jumped at the slightest sound – someone coughing was enough to set him off. He had the shakes, he had nightmares, he started to cry if anyone confronted him. He even started watching Dr. Phil. He wasn’t good for anything anymore. He had to go the therapy and medication route.

Sadd helped him get the garage going. You take care of your own, and George had been one of the guys. Many had thought he would take over the operation should Jimmy ever reach the point where he couldn’t go on. Now he’s an auto mechanic.

“It doesn’t look like you’re completely done with it.” Bruno nodded toward the truck. “Or do you always get up in the middle of the night to change O-rings? I’m guessing you’re about to open the false wall in the back of that trailer. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple thousand cartons of Romanian cigarettes behind it.”

“F*ck off.” He finds a cigarette in his pocket, lights it and arranges it between the two metal fingers.

“I’m busy, Bruno. Get yourself a cup of coffee down in the cafeteria, that’s all I can do for you.”

“I’m in deep shit, George. You’re all I got.”

“What happened to taking care of yourself? I can’t ...”

“I got a body in the back of my van.”

George slowly lifts the cigarette to his lips and takes a drag as he stares at Bruno. “Come into the office.”

***

“What are you thinking?” whispers George angrily through his teeth as he closes the office door behind them. The office is located in a small annex to the large garage spaces. There are bookshelves full of folders along the one wall, and old desks with computers whose keys are covered with oily fingerprints. Pictures of classic automobiles hang on the walls. “Tell me you didn’t park your f*cking Chevy in front of my garage with a goddamn stiff in the back, where anyone can take a look because there are windows all the way around!”

“I covered the body with a rug. You think I’m an idiot?”

George pulls open a drawer in one of the desks and finds a bottle of pills, which he opens. He casts a long, hard glance at Bruno before shaking out two of the pills. “You can’t do this to me, Bruno.”

“I don’t have any choice. I don’t know what the hell to do. I have to get rid of the stiff. Jimmy’s inside. I have no one else to go to.”

“I don’t do that kind of work anymore.” He sits heavily in the chair behind the desk. His hand shakes as he lifts the pills to his mouth and swallows them dry. “My nerves are shot. Helena is pregnant again, Bruno. I’ve got a new life going here. I’m a family man – I can’t ...”

He stumps out the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, and lights a new one in the same motion.

“Can’t you just go away?”

“Go where?”

“That’s not my problem. You must have gotten rid of bodies for Jimmy before – it can’t be the first time. You’ll figure it out. Go on. You were never here. I know nothing about it.”

“It’s different this time. It wasn’t planned.”

“I don’t want to know. Get out of here!”

“It happened in one of Jimmy’s secret apartments. I couldn’t just leave the body there.”

“ENOUGH ALREADY. GET OUT OF HERE!”

“Okay. Have it your way. But you’re forcing my hand – I’m gonna have to tell Jimmy you refused to help me when I ...”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have any choice.” You’re leaving me hanging here, George. I’m desperate. Look at me. I have no choice. That body can never be found. It has to disappear. Now.”

George shakes out another pill from the bottle. He leans back and turns on the radio, sliding the volume bar to the top. He gestures for Bruno to approach him. With his lips near to Bruno’s ear, he says, “Tell me what happened.”

***

“This is Alley-Cat Jack. We’ve got a new caller on the line.”

“Hey Jack, I don’t want to use my name.”

“So what do I call you?”

“Max.”

“Okay, Max. What’s up?”

“I’m a detective. I want to comment on the accusations of police corruption the papers have been covering these past few weeks.”

“The City is listening, Max.”

“I think it’s a cheap shot. I mean, the press talking about corruption, like they can’t be bought? Like, you think the papers would have backed the banks’ petition to be exempt from service-charge laws if they hadn’t been paid off? ‘THE BANKS HAVE TO LIVE TOO,’ isn’t that what they wrote? Good God ...

“And what is corruption, I ask you? Who gets hurt if a poor cop gets a new car or a week’s vacation in Kenya for letting the Baltic girls earn a living in peace, down on the docks? I mean, where’s the harm in that?”

“You can get AIDS.”

“Yeah, well, there is such thing as a condom. People have to protect themselves. These girls have no other way to make a living, and even if we did send them all back to the misery they came from, there’d still be a new batch of girls turning tricks down on the docks the next day. We’re just doing the community a favor. And if a cop gets a little taste, it’s not like there’s any harm done. It actually allows him to concentrate on the more serious crimes that cost lives every single day.”

“Such as?”

“Traffic violations.”

***

“Bruno, Bruno, Bruno,” George says faintly after he’s shut off the radio. “You really are in deep shit. Did you call?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s taking care of the apartment?”

“Yup.”

“You are so f*cked. Coming here with a stiff in the back of your van ... Shit, Bruno.” He rises, slowly shakes his head, and walks out of the office.

Bruno hesitates, shuffling his feet – he can’t decide whether or not to follow George. His ears are ringing from the noise of the radio. He looks around the office. It feels unreal, as though the whole thing were an out-of-body experience.

“Are you coming?” George says, appearing in the doorway with two shovels. “Spades would be better, but I don’t have any.”

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

“I’ve got some stuff to take care of on the way, Bruno.”

“Okay.”

George scratches his chin with his good hand. Bruno can hear the sound of the stubble. George turns and walks down through the garage’s work stations until he arrives at the one where the truck is being worked on. They go over behind the trailer. George knocks his claw on the bottom of the trailer to get his people’s attention. “I’ve got a few errands, so I’ll be gone a couple of hours. If anyone calls, take a message.”

There are two men inside the refrigerated trailer. One is using a blowtorch to remove the angle brackets that have kept the false wall in place. It’s precision work. If the blowtorch is held at the wrong angle it will ignite the cigarettes hidden behind the false wall. The man is wearing a welding shield and large work gloves. The other man holds a spray bottle of coolant, which he applies to the iron as soon as it has been severed by the blowtorch. The cigarettes are packed in a layer of protective material, but the Romanians have a history of taking shortcuts, so they aren’t taking any chances. Bruno knows the game – he did the same kind of work at another garage when he was still a boy.

The man with the blowtorch turns to them, flips up his visor and mumbles, “It’s all good.” His face is covered with tattoos.

They walk out through the rain to the Chevy. George opens the side door, tosses the shovels inside and lifts a corner of the rug. “Dead. No doubt about that,” he says as he drops the rug back into place. “Where did you get the plastic from?”

“It’s a garbage bag. I have a whole roll in the van. I’m planning to paint my living room, so I was gonna use them to cover the floor. I thought I could cut them up and ...”

“Okay.” George gets into the van. “Shit weather we’re having ...”

“Hmm ...” Bruno replies as he starts the engine.

“You need a new accumulator.”

“Maybe.”

George finds the cell phone in the middle of the front seat. “What’s the problem with your cell?”

“I dropped it. The f*cking thing doesn’t work. Where am I going?”

George sighs softly. “Just make a left. I’ll let you know.”

Bruno puts the van in gear, turns on the windshield wipers and steps on the gas.

“What color?”

“What?”

“What color are you painting the living room?”

Bruno casts a sidelong glance at his brother. “Off-white.”

“Off-white? Helena wants me to paint ours yellow, but I can’t deal with painting.”

“Thanks for doing this, George. I really appreciate it.”

“Uh-huh ... How about turning on the radio?”

***

“I’m the greatest inventor of our time!”

“Okay, so what have you invented? The cure for cancer? The solution to terrorism?”

“Even better. I invented a weather machine. From now on, it’s possible to control the weather. Think about it. Sunshine whenever we want it. Rain in the desert. It will change how we view the world.”

“I’m guessing a lot of my listeners would like to see a demonstration.”

“Fine by me, Jack. I just have to plug in the machine. The City will have to change its name to Sunny Beach.”

“We don’t have a beach.”

“Well, you know what I mean ... Okay, it’s plugged in. The lights are on. I’m pushing the button. Look at the sky! You’ll all be calling me a genius tomorrow – no, you’ll be calling me God!”

“Did you turn it on? Nothing’s happening. It’s still raining here. Hello, are you still there?”

“Yeah ... I think it just needs a tweak.”

***

The taxi whirls up a fog of dirty rainwater in its wake. The traffic is heavier now. The first wave of rush hour is starting to rumble through the streets of the City.

“Make a right at this light,” George says, pointing his finger.

“Okay.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” George turns in his seat.

“I’m not looking at you.” Bruno pulls into the right-turn lane and shifts gear, checking his side-view mirror for bicycles.

George makes clicking sounds with his mouth. “Whatever you say.”

They drive on in silence. The car radio plays an old disco track about crying and owing something to somebody. Bruno remembers the song from his youth, at which point it was already old. It was the kind of thing his mother listened to in her more jovial moments.

“Have you seen Mom at all?” George asks. Perhaps the thought triggered the same thought in his mind.

“Mom? No ...” He wrinkles his brow. “Should I have?”

“She’s HIV positive.”

“She’s what? How?”

“I guess she needed a little love.”

“Mom?”

“Uh-huh ...”

“Bullshit.”

George goes back to his clicking sounds. Bruno tightens his grip on the wheel and stares out of the windshield.

“So is she gonna die?”

“They have medicine for that now. If you can afford it.”

Bruno nods. “Where are we going?”

“You can stop over there.”

“By the bakery?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we doing at a bakery?”

“Buying breakfast.”

Bruno remains seated in the van while George runs through the rain to the bakery. He follows him with his eyes, watches him smile at the young girl behind the counter, point at a loaf of bread, chat. Bruno can’t sit still. He moves around in his seat, and fidgets with his seat belt. He taps his foot.

George now exits the bakery, two paper bags clamped between the claw’s two moving fingers.

“You want something? I got enough for two.”

Bruno shakes his head. “Man, I can’t eat anything with a stiff in the back.”

George fixes him in his gaze. “Those Zolofts make me so f*cking hungry. I’ve gained 20 pounds – it’s totally out of control. No, go the other way. I have to pick up a bicycle for Sofus.”

“Can we please just get rid of this body? Then I’ll drive you to Hamburg if you want.”

“Can’t. The bike has to be picked up now – I don’t want to discuss it. It’s Sofus’s birthday present, he’s two years old tomorrow. I have to get it.”

After a few minutes George fishes up a roll from the bag and starts to eat it. “Are you sure you don’t want a roll? They’re really good.”

Bruno remains silent. When he went to sleep the night before, everything was just as it should be. He watched TV in bed as he ate sushi and drank Japanese beer from the take-out place on the corner. He probably felt a little lonely. Normally he would have brought a whore home for the night, but that had begun to sharpen his sense of loneliness instead of dulling it, so he’d been cutting back on that practice. And the loneliness hadn’t been that bad the night before. He’d meditated for a while, and worked out at the center earlier in the evening, and he felt relaxed and in balance. He’d slept soundly, even before the test pattern had replaced television programming. He rarely dreamed. For him, sleep was nothing but a vast, black embrace.

And then the phone rang.

Now he sighs deeply and sends George a long, tired glance. “I’m really sorry about this, George. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

George nods weakly. He rummages through one of the bags and fishes out a container of orange juice. “Jimmy Sadd is the most evil man I’ve ever known. I mean really evil. I’m not talking about tough, or cruel – all the bosses are tough and cruel. You’ll never get anywhere in our world if you’re not respected. But Jimmy ... God damn, Bruno, getting involved with Sadd ... I’d rather do a deal with the devil himself. Sadd is worse. You’ll never get out.”

He puts the straw in his mouth and drinks some of the juice. “The first time I met Jimmy, I was inside for taking a lead pipe to that guy from the Snakes.”

The Snakes was a youth gang based around the concrete slum out behind the Stadium. There hadn’t been much interaction between them and the Spiders, the gang George and Bruno belonged to, until Suzette, one of the girls who hung out with the Spiders, was raped by a dark guy after a Run DMC concert at the Stadium. The cops didn’t do anything, of course. Girls are raped in the slums of the City every day, and the cops prefer to stay away from the slums.

George had a master key for all Fords. You could buy them for next to nothing all over the City. Fords are some of the easiest cars to steal. The day after, he drove Suzette and a handful of the boys out to the Stadium in a stolen Scorpio. They spent a couple of hours driving around the area before Suzette pointed out a guy. He was wearing a green beret with a snake stitched onto the front – the emblem of the Snakes. They stopped the car. George took care of him with the pipe, while the other guys held him down.

The cops wouldn’t normally spend a lot of time on something like that, but the guy had an uncle whose neighbor was the brother of a police detective. The one owed the other a favor, and abracadabra, George gets five weeks for aggravated assault. He was just fifteen years old.

“Sadd was in for running a whorehouse – that was before he had connections in the police department. He was running Thai girls down by the train station. Officially it was a tanning center, but down in the basement the game was on. Something like that. He’s still into that kind of thing.”

“Not really. These days the tanning centers are snow-white. You just don’t see any customers when you stop by.” Bruno laughs. “But if you check their books, they’d had to have had four people in each room, 24/7, in order to do that turnover. And he still can’t seem to wash all his money white.”

“I’ve seen Jimmy kill a guy.”

“So have I. The man’s ice-cold. It’s pretty creepy, because you don’t know it’s gonna happen before it happens. And then it’s always planned down to the smallest detail. Take the body over to the incinerator. Ask for Hans-Henrik. He’ll take care of the rest.”

“No, that’s being professional. It’s work – it’s the same for everybody. I’ve seen him kill because he likes it. He likes inflicting pain, slowly. It’s like sex for him.”

“Bullshit.”

“I was his right hand.”

“And now I am.”

“Are you? Then how is it you don’t know what he’s up to?”

“Because ...”

“Have you been in his ...?”

“I don’t wanna hear any more about it. I’m scared enough as it is.”

“Okay, okay. I hear you.” George takes another roll out of the bag. “I just want to be sure you’re not planning to score the cash in Jimmy’s secret room.”

“Are you crazy?”

“As long as we understand each other. We’re going out to The South Flatlands, so take the next exit.”

“Uh-huh,” replies Bruno as he pulls into the exit lane, signals and turns up the radio.

***