John Locke - Wish List

By four in the afternoon, Lissie has recovered enough to wonder why I’m acting so strangely. “I can’t remember you ever being more attentive, and yet you’re completely distracted. What gives?”

I’m attentive because if worse comes to worse I could get beat to death tonight, in which case I’ll never see her again. I’m distracted for the same reason.

“I’m just worried about you,” I say. “And nervous about my meeting tonight.”

“You’ll be great,” she says.

Actually, distracted isn’t the best word to describe how I’m feeling. What I am is scared shitless. It’s clear to me that Rudy wants me to fight, so the choice he gives me will probably be something worse than killing someone (or being killed) in the boxing ring.

But what could be worse than that?

At seven o’clock Rudy and Perkins pick me up and take me to an abandoned warehouse a half mile behind the airport at Standiford Field. There are two huge luxury busses in the parking lot, and two bouncers guarding the front door.

“What’s in there?” I ask Rudy.

“The cage.”

“What cage?”

“The one you’re fighting in.”

The cold sensation floods my body again. I know I’m pale with fear. I try to speak, but my voice comes out in a whisper. I swallow and try again. “What about our deal?”

“We’ll get you in the dressing room, get your hands wrapped, and then I’m going to show you a quick video of your opponent. After that, if you still don’t want to fight, I’ll give you an alternate choice.”

“Okay.”

Chapter 30

The dressing room is nothing more than a woman’s bathroom with two stalls and an oversized powder room that includes two sinks, a large mirror, a fabric couch, and a small Formica table with two scuffed, wooden stools, one of which I’m sitting on. On the counter, next to a sink, is a small monitor. Standing over me, applying tape to my hands is Gus, a grizzled old guy with cauliflower ears and a hopelessly broken nose. Gus, I’m told, is my cut man.

While Gus wraps my hands, Rudy and one of the bouncers hook up a video camera to the TV monitor. They’re watching something on the screen, but their broad backs are blocking my view. At one point the bouncer guy turns and looks at me and shakes his head, which I take as a bad sign.

“All right,” Rudy says. “Now rewind it a bit. Okay, that’s good. Hit the pause button. Okay, that’ll work.”

They both turn to face me, but they’re still blocking the screen. When Gus says he’s done with my hands, Rudy asks him to step outside for a few minutes. When he opens the door to leave I can hear people yelling and chanting.

“The natives are getting restless,” Rudy says.

The door closes and Rudy tells the bouncer guy to cut the lights.

Before he starts rolling the tape, Rudy says, “You wanted me to tell you the second thing you’ve done to pay us back.” He gestures to the monitor. “It’s this.”

The next three minutes are the worst of my life.

Afterward, when the guy flips the lights back on, the face I see in the mirror staring back at me is tear-streaked and filled with grief. I jump to my feet and run to the toilet and puke. I fall to my knees, sobbing, and puke again. I roll around on the floor, crying, moaning like a wounded animal. Minutes pass while my mind works to comprehend what I saw on the screen. When I finally get to my feet, there are two things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt: first, my life, as I knew it, is over. Second, I’m going to kill my opponent in the cage tonight, or die trying.

Rudy enters the doorway and calls out to me. “You ready to fight?”

I come out of the stall and stumble into him. He backs up a few steps and we’re in the powder room again. I’m blind with rage, but I want to take my fury to an even higher level. I motion to the TV monitor.

“Play it again,” I say. “In slow motion.”

Rudy smiles broadly. “Whatever you say, champ!”

He rewinds the tape, presses a button, and nods to the bouncer to cut the lights.

I’m standing three feet from the screen, bracing my hands on the countertop. As the tape starts, I hear a loud drumming sound and look around to find the source.

It’s me.

I’m tapping my fingers on the countertop, uncontrollably.

Like Jinny’s husband, Pete Rossman had done.

I turn my attention back to the screen…

Chapter 31

The quality of the video is excellent. There’s a time signature on the bottom right. It starts at 1:05 a.m. with a shot of me, Rudy and Richie getting in the car and driving away. There’s a slight jerk where they spliced the tape, and now it’s 1:09 am, and the same camera picks up a man entering the garage. He’s dressed in black, wearing a black ski mask similar to the ones Rudy and Richie had on. He removes a set of keys from his pocket and unlocks the door to my home. The camera switches to a view from the upstairs hallway, where we see the man climbing up the stairs. He pauses at our bedroom door, knocks, then waits a few seconds, then slowly opens the door and enters.

Another camera picks up the action in the bedroom. At this point it hasn’t dawned on me that someone has gone to the trouble to place all these cameras in my home and garage, and they’ve obviously been there long enough to be tested for lighting and angles. It also hasn’t dawned on me yet that the garage cameras would have revealed all the places I hid the cash.

What I do understand with total clarity is that a man is in my bedroom, standing over Lissie’s sleeping, helpless body. Though it’s dark in the room, I can see him push her shoulder a couple of times to see if she moves. She doesn’t. Then he walks over to the doorway and turns on the light switch.

With the lights on, and the time showing 1:12 a.m., a camera directly over the bed takes over and shows the man kissing Lissie’s face. The ski mask proves to be a hindrance to his intimacy, so he removes it, along with the rest of his clothing. Then he kisses her passionately, and starts removing her nightie.

The tape jumps again and it’s 1:16 a.m. The man is performing oral sex on my wife’s comatose body. I feel a white hot boil in the pit of my stomach. My heart aches as I watch her rape take place. Lissie trusted me and I want to die. I gave her a sedative, rendered her helpless, only to be violated by this human pond scum, and there is no pit deep enough to hide my anguish. I’m vaguely aware of the moaning sound coming from my mouth. I can taste the tears and snot dripping into my mouth and I want to fucking die.

I’ve never felt so powerless, never loathed myself to this degree. I want it to stop. If only I could go back in time and somehow make it stop. But it won’t stop. In fact, the brutalization of my wife’s helpless body has only just begun.

The tape jumps again and it’s 1:28 a.m. The maggot is doing my wife missionary style. Every now and then he turns and winks at the camera. He stops for a minute to arrange her body in the most degrading pose the perverted mind of a rapist could imagine. Then he brutally assaults her.

He finishes quickly, and lies down beside her, spent. But he’s not finished. Oh no. In fact, he’s just getting started.

The tape jumps again, and it’s 2:25 a.m. He’s doing my sacred Lissie doggie style, slapping her ass, pulling her hair, mugging for the camera. The tape jumps again, three more times over the next two hours, but I can’t share the unspeakable details of what he does to my poor Lissie.

But I know who he is.

I recognized him the instant he removed his ski mask.

In a few minutes I’ll be in a cage with him, and I will do everything in my power to kill him.

Chapter 32