Enforcer (8 page)

Connor smiled back at him before facing forward again. The Lincoln bumped and jarred over the gravel road. He wanted to ask why they were going into the dump. He wanted to ask how Dracul had a key to the road gate. What he really wanted to ask was why Travis was not freaking out. He decided that no one had bothered to tell Travis Benkula that his number was up tonight.

The three men exited the sedan after it came to a stop in front of a small one-room shack near the newest pit. Dracul used a key to unlock three deadbolts, flipping the light switch once the door was open. A double row of fluorescents blinded Connor for a moment until his eyes adjusted. He looked around, seeing only two chairs and a small table in the center of the room.

Travis went straight to one of the chairs and sat down. Dracul pointed to the other chair, and Connor obeyed. The Romanian went to the back of the shack, opened one of the cabinet doors, and removed a duffel bag. He brought the bag back to the table and set it in front of Travis, who grinned, unzipped the bag, and pulled out two large plastic cannisters full of white powder. After putting the duffel on the floor, he opened both of the plastic cannisters, setting the lids aside.

Travis noticed Connor watching and gave a thumbs-up before reaching into his coat pocket, his hand reappearing with a brick-sized package wrapped in tape. He set it on the table, then reached into his pocket again and brought out a folding knife. Travis flicked the blade open, carefully cutting the package lengthwise. He grinned at Conner when he stabbed the knife blade into the table.

Dracul watched for a minute then rummaged about behind Travis while the bearded man pulled out what looked like a library card and began to scoop from the first plastic cannister. Connor was amazed that anyone still had a library card in the age of the internet. He started to ask Travis about it when Dracul wrapped a nylon rope around Travis’s throat and pulled the ends tight, a creaking sound escaping from the Romanian’s leather gloves.

Connor nearly fell over backwards in surprise. He watched Travis’ face turn red, then creep into purple as the rope cut off the blood supply to his brain. Travis’ hands scraped and pulled at the rope digging into his neck, eyes wild, body convulsing as he tried to get free. Travis’ eyes locked onto Connor’s, and Connor could feel the terror flowing out of Travis and into him, along with an accusation of
why are you letting this happen? Help me!

Connor could only stare in horror at the bearded man’s face as it turned a dark purple. Travis had a last moment of clarity and reached forward, grabbing the knife out of the table. It was too late, and the knife fell from his hand a second later. Connor could smell the rank odor of urine and shit, and saw the stain on Travis’ pants when Dracul dragged the body to the middle of the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Connor said, as Dracul tied the rope off, leaving it embedded in Travis’ neck.

“Help me,” Dracul said, without looking at Connor.

Connor had no idea what to do. He’d wet himself a little in his fear and at the surprise of the murder right in front of him. Dracul looked up, pointed at Travis’ feet, then at Connor. He came around the table and knelt down, grabbing a foot in each hand. Dracul grabbed the dead man’s hands and they lifted the body off the floor, Dracul backing toward the shack’s door.

Once outside, they carried the body to the back of the Lincoln. Dracul carefully laid his end of the body on the gravel and opened the trunk with the Lincoln’s wireless key. The trunk lid popped open, and Dracul went to work unfolding a blue tarp, covering the trunk bed with it. He handed Connor two small bungee cords.

“Keeps shit in,” Dracul said, indicating that Connor should wrap one around each ankle so anything that had emptied out of Travis’ bowels wouldn’t slide along the legs and possibly out the bottom of the pants. Connor tried to keep from staring at the wetness spreading through the denim of both sides of the dead man’s crotch.

“Jesus Christ,” Connor said again as he laid his half of the body on the gravel.

He worked to get the cords around each ankle, unable to keep a single, clear thought in his head. His hands, like his feet, functioned on autopilot. When he was done, Dracul indicated they were to pick the body up once again and put it in the trunk. Connor could barely stand because of the nearly violent tremors in his legs, his right throbbing in pain around the scar. He felt like he was being poisoned by a toxic amount of adrenaline and nearly blacked out once the body thumped into the trunk.

Dracul shut the trunk and went back to close the shack door before returning to the Lincoln, gesturing to Connor to get in. Once in the car, Dracul drove slowly down the gravel road toward the main waste pits.

“What about the stuff?” he asked, afraid to break the silence, unable to stand it any longer. Dracul gave him a blank look. “The stuff. The dope that he was getting ready to mix up.”

“Someone comes,” was all the Romanian would say.

Connor leaned back in his seat and tried to forget everything. He couldn’t get the image of Travis’ eyes bulging, his mouth hanging open, the terror in his purple face as he was being strangled. When Connor closed his eyes, the image in his mind became clearer. He opened them and tried to focus on the lights ahead as Dracul drove. Each bump and creak of the Lincoln made his stomach roil and his heart begin to pound, sure that at any moment Dracul would decide to kill him as well.

A few minutes later, they pulled up to a building that was nothing little more than a large smokestack spewing a thick grey stream of ash. Dracul exited the car, Connor following on autopilot while his mind tried to burn itself out from an overload of terror. They reversed the routine, removing the body from the trunk and carrying it into an open bay door toward a large pile of garbage. Dracul set his end of the body down near the pile, leaving Connor holding the legs while he walked to the door of a small office inside the bay.

The door opened and a man in dirty coveralls chatted with Dracul for a moment. Connor couldn’t hear them over the noise of the heavy loader scooping up bucketfuls of trash before dumping it onto a conveyor belt. The man in coveralls nodded and talked into his two-way radio. Dracul walked back to where Connor stood. They waited for the loader to dump its load onto the conveyor, watching it back around and swing toward them when it was done.

The loader’s bucket dropped near the ground and the machine drove forward until the bucket was within a foot of the tarp-wrapped body. Dracul motioned again. They picked up Travis’ body and dropped it into the loader’s bucket. Connor watched with morbid fascination as the loader dumped the body onto the conveyor belt, Travis’ body slowly moving up toward a giant bowl at the top.

Dracul watched until the body tipped over the edge and fell into the incinerator. He motioned once more for Connor to get into the car while he went to the trunk and retrieved the blue tarp. He waved for the loader to return, dropping the tarp into the bucket before joining Connor in the Lincoln. Neither of them said a word as they made their way down the gravel road and back to the highway.

*****

The rest of the evening was a nightmarish blur. Connor barely remembered the last two clients he and Dracul dealt with. His mind raced with fear at what he’d witnessed, what he’d been a part of. He’d always done his best to remain on the outside of Ojacarcu’s darker side. As the Lincoln cruised the streets, all Connor could think of was Travis Benkula’s face.

Ten minutes after leaving the landfill, Connor made Dracul stop at a convenience store so he could open the door, lean his head out, and throw up. His stomach bucked and surged. Everything he’d put into it that hadn’t been digested already coming back up in a soupy, brownish-orange mixture. The smell of it made him gag and dry heave a few more times.

When he finally felt like his stomach had calmed down, he wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve, leaned back in his seat, and closed the door. Dracul said nothing as he shifted the Lincoln into drive and pulled back out into the light traffic. Connor didn’t bother to steal a glance at the big man, afraid he’d find another toothy grin mocking him. He rooted around in his coat pockets looking for gum to cleanse the taste of stomach acid and partially-digested food from him mouth.

Connor barely remembered stopping somewhere in South Meridian, where Dracul gave a warning to a young Hispanic kid. He had only a vague memory of visiting the last name on the list. He’d been surprised that the person turned out to be a woman in her forties. Dracul must have sensed that Connor was barely holding himself together, and did the job of breaking three of the woman’s fingers while she screamed.

He had no idea why the woman’s fingers needed to be broken, and didn’t bother to ask. When he wasn’t recoiling in fear at what he’d witnessed at the landfill, he was paranoid that a police car would light them up. He tried to assure himself that he’d yell at the top of his lungs to the cops that the Romanian was a murderer, escaping from one nightmare to enter another that involved arrest, booking, and a hearing in the morning before a judge. His career and his life would be ruined. That seemed more important somehow, increasing the guilt and shame that he’d keep his mouth shut should they be unlucky enough to be pulled over by the cops.

Connor barely made it up the steps to his apartment when Dracul dropped him off. He struggled to put the key in the lock, and somehow made it all the way into the bathroom before doubling over when the dry heaves began again. He spent the night guzzling the last eight beers in his barren refrigerator, and when that didn’t dull his senses enough, he clawed through the small pantry and his bare cupboards looking for a forgotten bottle of the hard stuff. When nothing turned up, he found an unopened bottle of Nyquil under the sink in the bathroom. He kept it down, not caring that he might have helped himself into a serious bout of alcohol poisoning.

Connor woke to the sun reflecting from his bedroom wall, the blinds wide open, his apartment as cold as the old barn back home in Macklin during the dead of winter. The bright spot was the lack of nightmares. He had been haunted by nightmares of his brush with death, as well as Niklas Laarkonen’s ghost, and had no doubt he’d be dreaming of Travis Benkula soon enough.
Maybe
, he thought,
Niklas and
Travis will gang up on me and put me out of my misery
.

He dragged himself out of bed and stood in front of the mirror for five minutes with the shower running before climbing in. The water was too hot, scalding his skin, but to Connor, it wasn’t hot enough. It would never be hot enough to burn away whatever was beginning to eat him up inside. He didn’t bother shaving, barely even bothering to wash himself. He wasn’t sure how long he stood under the shower head other than long enough for the water to work its way from scalding to luke-warm to cold before he finally shut it off.

After drying himself off and brushing his teeth to remove the previous night’s puke-beer-Nyquil triple combo, he went to the kitchen to see if he had overlooked any alcohol. When no stray or forgotten bottles turned up, he put his shoes on, grabbed his coat, and headed to the Starbucks.

Dana handed him his coffee with a smile that wasn’t returned. Both girls were hurt that he hadn’t been his usual cheery self, but they figured he’d had a bad game the night before. Instead of going back to the apartment, Connor walked two blocks to Liquor Nation to stock up on booze.

CHAPTER 8

“Fuck off,” Connor slurred as the pounding on his apartment door continued. “Fuck off fuck off FUCK OFF!” he screamed, throwing the empty bottle of cheap vodka at the door, unsatisfied at the sound of shattering glass.

The pounding stopped for a few seconds, followed by two short, almost polite knocks. Connor nearly fell over trying to get out of the recliner. His vision was quadrupled from the alcohol, but somehow he made it to the door without cutting his feet on the sharp remnants of the vodka bottle. It took him three tries to get the deadbolt turned and the door open.

Petre stared first at the wreck of his friend, then at the shards of glass littering the area around the door.

“The fuck do you want?” Connor said. His words came out as if he were talking underwater.

When Petre said nothing, Connor turned his back on the man and made his way to the recliner. He sat down hard, grabbed the remote, turned the television on, and raised the volume of a show that had airplanes and military men scrambling around on the deck of a ship.

Petre entered the apartment, walked to Connor’s chair and stood there until Connor acknowledged him.

“Blocking my fucking TV, man,” Connor mumbled, barely conscious.

Petre reached down and took the remote from Connor, who gave it up without issue. Petre pointed the remote behind him and pushed the Off button, the sudden silence in the apartment making Connor uncomfortable. Petre stared at him for another minute before he reached down and took the bottle of cheap whiskey that had appeared in Connor’s hand. He walked to the kitchen and set the bottle on the counter before going back to the chair.

“Connor, my friend, this is not good,” he said.

“Fuck off,” Connor slurred.

“This is not you,” Petre said.

“I said fuck off.”

Petre leaned down and slapped Connor across the face with enough force to make his head rebound off the back of the recliner. A scream of rage erupted from Connor’s throat as he came out of the chair like a spring, his hands going straight for Petre’s neck. Petre chopped down at Connor’s arms, grabbing him in a bear hug. Connor lashed out with his feet and his forehead, trying to connect with some part of Petre’s body. Petre leaned his head in and to the side of Connor’s, giving the young man no ability to do any real damage.