David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

Mickey says, “When you think about it, ending pain and suffering is a pretty decent thing to do.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You gotta think ahead these days, Sugar. Ten years from now, I guarantee you, it will be perfectly legal in all fifty states.”

“What will be legal?”

“Putting people to sleep,” Junior says. “Sick people…for their own good. When they do legalize this stuff, whoever’s there with an operation set up, they’re going to be like FedEx in about two months.”

Vickie is now in a beer-dulled fury. “You put Wendy to sleep, didn’t you? You and Ray. For the policy money, yeah. I’m sorry, but it makes perfect sense. That’s murder, you know. Let that sink in a minute. Give it some thought. You murdered my sister. He murdered his wife.”

“Bullshit. Mother. Maybe legally it’s something like murder, but look, people are out of step, the laws are all wrong. Everybody oughta have the right to put a loved one to sleep if they have to. Maybe people’ll have to go down to the post office with a note from a doctor and they’ll give you a one-time mercy-killing waiver.”

Vickie’s jaw is slack. She can’t believe what she’s hearing.

Lorna brushes past Vickie, opens the fridge, grabs two beers, pops them, starts back for the stairs. “Hey, Vickie, bitch, we’re going to Disneyland and you’re not.”

“All of a sudden, you, and him, who’ve got no business anywhere, suddenly have business in Florida? What in the shit is going on here?”

“Shut up, bitch!” Lorna storms up the stairs.

Junior says to Vickie and Mickey, “Look. I’ll be honest. Ray met this rich guy down there who’s got an old dying brother. The brother wants to whack himself, but nobody in the family is willing to hand him a gun. So I do it and walk away with a load of cash. Ray gets fifteen percent. You two get another fifteen percent. I get the rest.”

Vickie is incredulous. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”

Junior says, “This is a family business, Vickie. Can’t you see it? We’re helping people go out with dignity and making money at the same time. It’s win-win and it’s almost legal.”

Mickey shrugs. “What’s wrong with that?”

Vickie picks up the phone receiver. “This is nuts. This is crazy. This is murder!”

Junior reaches for the receiver. “Who are you calling?”

“The police of course.”

Junior wrestles her for the receiver. “No! No calls to the police or anybody else.” He pulls the receiver away and hangs it up. He gets Vickie into an arm lock, forces her to her knees. “You wanna get us all in trouble? This is mercy killing here. Don’t you get it? There’s big, big money to be made.”

“Let me go!”

Mickey stands by, not sure what to do.

Junior pleads, “Mickey, for shit’s sake, help me out. Get the duct tape. It’s in the kitchen drawer.” He stuffs a handkerchief into her mouth.

Mickey fetches the tape and wraps it over her mouth and around her head.

He then wraps her wrists behind her back.

On a putting green in Sarasota, Rick lines up a putt. Ray obsessively picks up bits of debris in the path of the ball. Lorna, in the background, buys two diet Cokes and three hot dogs from an attendant at a refreshment shack. “Where’s Disneyland? Is it around here?”

The attendant points in a northeasterly direction. “A couple a hundred miles that way.”

“It’s not here?”

“No, ma’am. It’s in Orlando.”

“Shit, fuck, piss.”

“You could rent a car. Take you four hours. Hertz place is right down the street.”

“Thanks. Maybe I’ll do that.”

After Junior gets off an awkward, weak drive, Rick nods toward Lorna. “What about her? She know what’s going on?”

“Yeah, no problem. She’ll be with us when we do it. Like, moral support.”

“We? When we do it?”

“It’s company policy that a member of the family has to be on the scene. That’s the rule.”

“Fuck the rule. What do you think I’m paying you for? Look, tomorrow night. We’re having a party…two, three hundred people, a band. When the time looks right, I’ll show you where his room is and where the gun is. You take care of business, va-voom, he’s out of his misery and you’re back at the party.” He hands Junior an envelope. “There’s half. The rest when it’s over. The party starts at eight.”

Junior tucks the envelope into his back pocket.

In the Zook kitchen, Mickey fries a pork chop, then transfers it to a plate, which sits on a tray with a paper napkin and a plastic knife and fork. He slathers mayonnaise on a slice of white bread, tears it in half, puts the pieces alongside the pork chop. He adds a plastic bottle of drinking water to the tray, drops a roll of toilet paper into a plastic bucket, and unlocks a padlock that’s recently been installed on the hall closet door. Vickie sits inside on a small stool, her head lost among hanging clothes, under a pull-string light.

Mickey places the bucket in a corner. “In case you gotta go potty, use that. And here’s some water and a chop. Now, I’m gonna take that tape off your mouth so I can feed you. Don’t make any kind of a ruckus. You promise?”

She nods. He peels off the tape. “You can’t keep me in here forever, you asshole.”

“Don’t be calling me names. I don’t think you’re bonding with the group. There’s five of us in the family. If four of us vote one way, you gotta go along. That’s democracy, isn’t it?”

“If this is a democracy, I’m a political prisoner!”

“Pipe down or the tape goes back on.” Mickey cuts the chop with the plastic knife. “You’re gonna feel pretty stupid in ten years, Vickie, when it’s all legal and somebody else got in on the ground floor. We’ll be sitting out there in our rocking chairs, flat broke, sick as dogs, wishing we could afford a service like Thanatek.”

“Mickey, you know what the French call this?”

“No, what?”

“Folly-ah-doo. It means when two people go nuts together. In this case, it’s four by my count. That would be folly-ah, whatever four is.”

“You need some time alone, to work on your attitude. I’m gonna go over and grab a steak at the Angus Room. I’ll check on you when I get back. Finish eating.”

“How can I?” She indicates the duct tape on her wrists.

Mickey hesitates a moment, then unwraps her wrists. “Okay. Okay. You can’t get out of here.”

At Rick’s McMansion, a high roller bash is in progress. Lorna eats canapés, drinks champagne from a fountain. Junior listens to a boozy businessman go on about money: “It’s simple as pie. Business is the art of making money. Art is the manipulation of a medium, any medium. Business is the manipulation of the medium of currency. That’s what makes it an art. I think of myself as a business artist.”

Rick appears, “It’s time.” He takes Junior aside.

Lorna, Rick and Junior make their way slowly up a staircase and stand outside a door. Lorna eats a stuffed mushroom, drinks champagne. “So Disneyland’s in Orlando. I thought it was here. Maybe we can rent a car and drive there tomorrow or something, Junior.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Rick says, “That’s like three hundred miles. It’ll take all day.”

Lorna swallows the last of a mushroom. “Fuck, man, Florida must be bigger than it looks.”

Rick and Junior puzzle a moment over her meaning.

“The gun is in the dresser drawer,” Rick says.

“What about the noise?” Junior wants to know.

“It’s got a silencer. There’s a lotta noise downstairs. I’ll tell the band to crank it up. Nobody’s gonna hear anything.”

“So I just give it to him and leave, right?”