James Swain - The Program

As he’d started to leave his house, he’d realized that Wayne needed to be fed. As part of the Program, he cooked three delicious meals a day for Wayne, and fed him tasty snacks whenever the boy was hungry. Wayne needed to be happy, and keeping his stomach full was a good way to do that. He’d prepared a thick roast beef sandwich, which he’d taken to Wayne’s room. He’d untied Wayne, and watched him wolf down the food.

“I have to go out for a little while,” Renaldo had said. “I will make you a wonderful dinner when I return.”

“Are you going to leave me tied to the chair?” Wayne had asked.

Renaldo had nodded solemnly.

“What about the movies? Can’t you show me something else?”

The TV was showing a gang rape to the accompaniment of Pink Floyd’s The Wall .

“What would you like to see?”

“I don’t know – something normal for a change.”

Renaldo did not know what normal was. He’d tied Wayne back to the chair and left the house.

A movement in front of the library caught his eye. Three people were coming down the front steps, the police letting them pass. Renaldo studied them through his binoculars, one at a time.

The first person was a soft-looking white man wearing a cheap brown suit. Pinned to his lapel was a policeman’s badge.

The second was a cute little blond wearing a dark pants suit. She appeared to be in charge. Another cop, he guessed.

The third was a sexy teenage girl.

The cute blond escorted the teenage girl to a police cruiser. The blond spoke a few words, and the teenager nodded solemnly. The teenager wasn’t wearing handcuffs, and didn’t appear to be in trouble.

Moments later, the cruiser drove away with the teenage girl.

Renaldo focused on the cute little blond. She got behind the wheel of a blue Audi that was parked illegally in a bus zone. A decal on the dash said FBI.

This was really bad.

He did not want to mess with the FBI. They were smarter than the police, and never quit. The FBI would put him back in a mental hospital, or in prison. They were the enemy.

He decided to leave.

“Hey – don’t I know you?” a raspy voice asked.

Renaldo shivered in the brutal summer heat. No one knew him. He did not have a single friend in the entire world. He turned to find an aging black man standing behind him. The old man’s clothes were odd – dark dress pants, a navy button-down shirt, white necktie, red suspenders, and a porkpie hat titled rakishly to one side. Hanging around his neck was a laminated badge with a blurry photograph.

“I don’t think so,” Renaldo said.

“I’ve seen you around town. You drive around at night, picking up hookers.”

He knows, Renaldo thought.

“We talked once. About three months ago, thereabouts,” the old man went on. “You were scouting for tail down by the bridge. I was there, and we struck up a conversation. You asked me about my clothes.”

Renaldo dug deep in his memory. The old man was a professional panhandler. His gimmick was to approach tourists on the street, and gave them a spiel about being in town for a Shriner’s convention, and losing his wallet. That was the reason behind the odd clothes and ID tag.

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” Renaldo bowed his head and attempted to walk around him.

“Why were you spying on the police?” the old man asked.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been watching you the whole time. Saw you pull into the garage, and followed you up here.”

Renaldo’s inner alarm went off. His first thought was to kill the old man, and throw him in the trunk of his car. He could dismember him in the bathtub at the house, and feed him to his neighbor’s dogs. They stayed out at night, and were always hungry.

He glanced over his shoulder. The police cars had vacated the library. It was doable. If he got a hand around the old man’s throat, no one would hear a thing.

He reined in the murderous impulse. He needed to be like the shark, and not draw attention to himself. Removing his wallet, he pulled out a crisp twenty dollar bill, and shoved it into the old man’s hands.

“What’s that for?” The old man sounded indignant.

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“That’s not enough to shut me up.”

Renaldo opened his billfold. He had eighty dollars.

“Take all of it,” Renaldo said.

“I want more.”

“That’s all I have.”

“You’ll pay, when you hear what I have to say.”

There was an expression for what the old man was trying to pull. It was called a shakedown. Renaldo closed his wallet and headed to his car on the other side of the roof, near the ramp. The old man fell in step behind him. Renaldo noted how he was keeping his distance, staying a few yards back. He knows everything.

“I’ve been watching you a long time,” the old man said. “You’re a bad one, you are. Trolling the streets at night, picking up hookers. You take them home and kill them, then dispose of their bodies. Tell me I’m right.”

Renaldo kept his eyes peeled to the ground and kept walking.

“You wear a uniform sometimes. What are you, a deliveryman?”

Renaldo kept walking.

“Or a fireman?”

Renaldo pulled his keys out of his pocket.

“I knew some of those girls,” the old man went on. “I kept telling the police they were disappearing, but they didn’t listen.”

Renaldo jammed his key into the driver’s door and opened his car. The heat bubble inside the vehicle swept over his body, and he staggered back.

“How many have you killed? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? I bet you don’t even know the number. Poor girls disappear, nobody gives a rat’s ass.”

Renaldo leaned against the car and tried to catch his breath. As strange as it sounded, he’d been raised Catholic, and believed in heaven and hell. He knew that someday he’d end up in burning in hell for all the killing he’d done. He wondered if this was a preview of eternal damnation.

“I have a bank account. I’ll give you what’s in it,” he managed to say.

“Now you’re talking, son. Give me the address, and I’ll meet you there.”

Renaldo told him the bank’s location. The old man headed for the stairwell. He had a spring to his step, and was already counting the money.

Renaldo watched him leave. The old man was a con man. He would come back in a few weeks, and shake him down again. Then he’d do it again. It was how these things played out. He would turn Renaldo’s life into a nightmare.

My life will be hell before I die , he thought.

A jetliner appeared in the cloudless sky. On an approach pattern for the airport, its engines drowned out all sound. It was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, and Renaldo drew his knife. The old man glanced over his shoulder as the shark descended upon him. “Please,” he begged.

He dragged the old man into a stairwell and slit his throat, the blood flowing down the stairs. Then he got a small saw he kept in his trunk for situations like this. He went to work on the old man, and cut him up. The pieces he wanted to keep, he wrapped in plastic, and put in his car. The rest he dragged to the other side of the parking garage, and propped up against the wall, using the old man’s porkpie hat to hide his missing head.

Renaldo appraised his handiwork. The old man looked like he was taking a siesta. The police would freak when they took the hat away, which was exactly what he wanted.

He decided to put a cherry atop his cake. From his car, he found a slip of paper and a ballpoint pen. On the slip he wrote the words Mr. Clean. He folded the slip into a neat square, and stuck the slip in the rim of the old man’s hat.