Angel Colón - No Happy Endings

You’re fucking right.

As soon as I saw him slide off the bar stool, I jumped up to beat him to the men’s room. I banged the table with my knee, knocked over my brand new beer. A trio of co-workers at the table next to me stopped their conversation and gave me annoyed over-the-shoulder stares, but I didn’t have time to apologize. I had a man to kill.

I must have looked like I had the runs while I hot-footed it to the bathroom. I got there only a few steps ahead of Mr. Swiss, but he got held up in the short hallway outside the john by a pair of backslapping ex-frat types. It gave me just enough cushion.

In the bathroom were two stalls, two urinals and two sinks. No people. So far, so good.

I knew he had to go into a stall to change into the underpants, all part of the plan. So I ducked into the first stall and shut the door. In my jacket pocket was the wire. A palm-sized wooden handle on each end, piano wire stretched between. I always wondered what note that string played, but I’d never found out.

I unspooled the garrote and gripped it in both hands. A public place like this was fraught with way too many dangers. Trying to get away after gunshots was simply not on the list of smart options. So a silent kill was necessary. I wondered if we weren’t so hard up for cash if I’d take the same risks this job proposed.

Soon after I had the weapon in both hands I heard the door open, the music getting momentarily louder and then being muffled again. The band playing over the speakers was Boston. Being played in the city of Boston. Weird. The last song this guy would ever hear.

I followed the sound of his footsteps on the tile as he passed by my stall and entered the open one next to me. I heard his belt unbuckle, pants drop. All normal bathroom sounds.

I gave him a second more, then put a foot up on the toilet, no lid, only a U-shaped seat. Kicking in the door to his stall was an approach I’d considered, but it was loud, would make the space cramped, and then left the kill on view for the next visitor when the job was done. To get to him while the door was still locked meant he wouldn’t be found until the cleaning crew after last call.

I raised up slowly and peeked over the top, my feet balancing on the plastic toilet seat. From what I knew about this guy, he’d probably like being spied on while he dressed in women’s panties. If there was a glory hole between these two stalls, I bet I could get him to blow me.

I saw the top of his head and a pronounced bald spot. There was a ring of sweat stain on the back collar of his white shirt. His head was down as he pulled on the lace number Bricks had given him. I reached over with the loop of wire and aimed it at his neck.

As the thin piano string passed in front of his eyes his head jerked up and I yanked. Before he could turn his head up and see me, I had him in a noose of metal. I pulled hard, getting my elbows up to the top of the wall between stalls. He was thrashing now, his legs kicking in stunted half-kicks since the panties were around his ankles.

His fingers dug at his neck, searching for the wire and an inch of space he could wedge himself into to ease the pressure, but there was none to be found. The wire dug deep in the folds of his neck, swallowed by flesh and starting to cut. I gave an upward jerk, sweat forming on my face as I grimaced with the effort. I realized I had been holding my breath and I let out a loud exhale. Only after I did it did I realize what a mocking gesture it was—loudly showing off all the air I could get in and out of my lungs.

His elbows banged the metal walls between our cubicles. Sputters of the last air in his throat and mouth burst out. Then I was falling.

My foot was wet. My wrist screamed in pain. I’d let one foot slide off the toilet seat and land in the bowl. My right arm was stretched out, my wrist painfully wrenched over the top of the stall as I held onto the loop of wire for dear life—and to end his.

I lifted my foot out, only to have my other foot splash in its place. Looking down I could see in the gap under the stalls that his feet had left the ground. My body weight falling had lifted him.

I rescued my other foot and had to step down onto the floor to reposition myself. My arms ached as I strained to keep hold of the garrote. Blood began pouring to the floor on his side of the wall. The wire had broken through.

The Swiss man’s struggles stopped almost immediately. The blood came down quickly, like he was pissing away a night’s worth of beer and missing the bowl.

I stood on the toilet seat again, easing up for a second on the wire. His body slipped and his feet touched ground. By the time I stood tall and tightened my grip again I realized I was holding dead weight.

I didn’t hear the door open, but the music got louder. “More Than a Feeling.”

“Hold on, I gotta take a wicked piss.”

So I knew he was a local. Good news was he sounded alone. I slid as far back to the tiled wall of the bathroom as I could to keep my arms draped over the divider out of sight from the man headed for a urinal. I didn’t want to let the Swiss man drop. The sound would be a giveaway, plus he might slip a leg out from under the stall door or something.

The muscles in my forearms burned. First from the strangulation, now the holding of a two-hundred-pound carcass of prime Swiss meat. Sweat dripped into my eyes but my hands were clawed onto the wooden handles of the wire loop and couldn’t help me.

Piss hit the porcelain basin of the urinal outside the stalls, and this was indeed a wicked one. He kept going and going like he hadn’t seen a bathroom in a week.

I grunted. Couldn’t help it. Still, not entirely out of place sound in a toilet stall.

The fountain of urine outside continued to fall.

My foot slipped again. I splashed into the bowl a third time. He had to have heard it, even over the sounds of his racehorse piss.

“Jesus, buddy,” he said. The beer might’ve been leaving his body, but it had already made its way to his brain. He sounded drunk and had to laugh at me.

“Don’t get the chowder,” I said, though I skipped trying to do the accent—chowdah. He laughed at that too, then started to wrap things up quickly, I assumed to head off the massive cloud of stink he thought would soon be emanating from my stall. Score one for my slippery foot.

He set off the flusher and left the room without washing his hands, and for that I was grateful. As soon as the music settled back into the pillow-over-the-ears muffle, I let the Swiss man fall. The sound of his body collapsing, banging against the toilet bowl, echoed off the tile and mirror walls.

I sat down on the toilet and panted for breath. My hands were frozen in a claw-fingered grip. I’d let one side of the wire loose and the other end dangled from my left hand, the wire slick with blood. On the tile floor between the stalls the pool of blood had found its way to the drain set in an indent in the floor, there to catch piss from those too drunk to aim well.

I bent down and gave his legs a shove, pushing his body into the stall so no part of him hung out. I evaluated my work. Not good enough. If someone bent down to look, they’d see him in a heap. Probably see the blood too.

I took off my jacket and hung it on the little hook there. First time in my life, I think, I’d ever used one of those things. I got down on the floor and slid under, hurrying since I knew there was more than one guy in the bar with a wicked piss in him.

My shirt got streaked with blood as I passed from one stall to the other. Fresh blood was probably not the worst thing my shirt picked up under there. Working fast I got him seated on the toilet and balanced so he’d stay. Up close, I saw the damage my wire had done. A ragged line was torn across his neck, blood and strings of flesh like the torn hem of a garment. His eyes were a maze of burst blood vessels, his tongue swollen and purple, wouldn’t fit in his mouth. Worst of it all were the little black panties he wore.