The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (72 page)

The article, dated five years back, was intended as a last gift to Rem. A kind of statement about the men he’d done business with, how they had always been this greedy, this disregarding of other people, and how they would not change.

✩

Santo drank and insisted on driving. He knew the route, he said, so Rem wouldn’t have to pay attention to the maps. He knew how to get there. South, then west.

Rem watched the last of the city pass behind them. One remaining building from the Robert Taylor Homes, the last out of a scattered wall of high-rise blocks. It didn’t occur to him until later that they were heading east not south – toward Michigan – a mistake which took a further two hours to correct.

The men hardly spoke, and Rem could not be certain what this drive was about, except that they would end up in Austin, see what work they could hustle from one of HOSCO’s subsidiaries, although any debate about this idea soon dissolved into argument: both of them unhappy to return to the company, but neither seeing a choice.

‘Would you go back?’

‘Iraq? No.’

‘Me neither.’

They could make it to St Louis before dark, find a motel on the other side of Memphis. It wouldn’t be beyond him to drive all night, he said. ‘We make Highway 10 at Baton Rouge.’ Once in Louisiana they would soon be in Texas. Sealy first, then up to Austin, after which, who knows.

At Sealy they would locate Cathy. Find her at her parents or her sisters. ‘She’s sending you this information. She’s still thinking about you. See?’

Rem rolled in and out of sleep. Santo opened energy drinks, answered his own questions and did not seem to mind if Rem was or was not listening. The smell, nutmeg and honey, of cold spice, brought back memories of Fatboy, and Fatboy’s small room – the cab of Santo’s car feeling almost as tight and airless.

‘Your parents alive?’ He’d never asked Santo about his family, but understood it to be large, that the Hernandez family were spread generously across North Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, St Paul.

‘At one point we lived close. My grandparents, aunts, uncles. There was a fire, but up until then we were all together. After the fire my father had to start over. His business was destroyed, so he had to find work elsewhere. After the fire we started moving around, things were spread about. It happened quickly, but I don’t remember much. To me there was this fire and then people left, and there were new people about us who we called aunty and uncle. Things were hard for a time.’

Santo smoked, opened the window to flick out his ash. Commented on the landscape.

‘This place needs hills. Seriously. It needs landscaping. It needs the Hernandez family to sort it out. You know, there’s some pyramids out here. Maybe Indian, I don’t think they even know, but they found these chambers where they’d buried people alive. I don’t know how they know this, but there were these stone chambers underground that you could get into but not out. Like a sacrifice or something. A slow sacrifice.’

Rem half-listened, looked out at the fields of corn stubble.

Across the road from the parking lot Santo found a private members’ casino. He won $50 in his first game and then lost every time after. Nevertheless his mood lifted, Rem could see it in his gestures, how he became broader when he was playing, his arms widening to express his failing luck. He accepted the free drinks, sent beer over to Rem who sat apart, alone, the appeal of the place not extending beyond the ring of tables and slot machines. Sat next to a sticky wall in a vast half-darkness, Rem drank and waited, tapped his foot along with an entertainer who sang to a backing track, and wondered how the police didn’t shut the place down, and realized, it was all police – the gamblers, the drinkers, the investors.

When Santo came back, smiling, he shook Rem by his shoulder. ‘I know exactly what you need,’ he said. ‘After tomorrow, you’re going to feel better.’

As they walked out Santo leaned on Rem for support.

The countryside out of Santa Fe appeared contradictory, the air thin, mountain-like, but the land flat and stony, a desert, sure, but not the desert of Al-Muthanna. Here there was scrub, spiny and dusty-green, even some grass in place, piñon trees, larger boulders, a substantial flat plate of sky, a numb blue, a breathless blue, and the definiteness of the rocks, their honey colour, their solidity.

Despite Rem’s questions Santo still wouldn’t explain himself. This wasn’t Route 10, it wasn’t Louisiana, this desert wasn’t the swamp. Not even close. They were so far from Louisiana, he said, he couldn’t even imagine it. The further they drove the dryer and more weathered the land became, and as they turned off the highway and came slowly through a gate Santo hitched forward in his seat and drove with more attention. ‘Not long now,’ he said, and appeared to look for clues. ‘This is Peterstown.’

‘This is where Geezler lives?’ The name struck Rem in an instant.

‘Not quite. This is where he
had
a house.’ Santo couldn’t hold in his smile. ‘You think we might call in?’

‘He won’t be here. Neither will the house. This whole situation is five years old. The house will be gone. Besides, it’s a bad idea.’

‘It’s here all right. I looked it up. The man just can’t live in it. And anyway, we’ve arrived.’

He pulled the car round a long curve, the land opening out to a gravel paddock, and a low-lying building, roofless, but with long tan adobe walls.

‘The man likes horses. Can you imagine? And what was he? A
deputy
? An
assistant
? This was going to be a stud farm. He fucking breeds horses.’

Not a picture to keep in your head, Rem agreed.

‘I had to see this. I love this story. He built this house, and then they made him take it down – only one floor though. So that’s it. That’s what he has. One floor of nothing.’

‘Why are we here?’

‘It’s no accident. We’re not calling because we happen to be close. You think we’re the only people he fucked with?’

He let Santo get out of the car, watched him walk to the boot, take out a crowbar, then saunter toward the building and clamber over one of the low-lying walls. He waited, determined not to follow, but also curious.

The land split in front of the house, a vast narrow canyon, so that the house topped one side. The rooms were laid out, concrete, cleaned, and roofless. The walls had been cut, so the entire house held the appearance of being sawn horizontally in half. The range of the rooms, laid out like a villa, something you’d see on a holiday programme, where the presenter would speak about the possible activities that might once have happened in such a place, evoke a lifestyle by looking at stunted walls, views and prospects.

In what Rem took to be the lounge, the largest defined space, a staircase, a clean oblong dropped through the concrete.

‘Get this,’ Santo called up. ‘There’s more down here.’

Rem came carefully down the steps and found Santo in a concrete chamber, working on the door. With nothing else to take out his frustration on, he swung the crowbar and knocked off the handle. Still inside, he let the door close.

Rem stood on the bottom step. Santo, unable to get out, banged, first with his fist, then with the crowbar. The sounds seeming soft, distant. Rem had to push hard to open the door.

‘That’s not funny.’ Santo stepped out, alarmed. ‘There’s no windows. You know how dark it is in here?’

‘Shouldn’t have messed with the lock.’

Rem returned up the stairs, there was nothing to be gained by looking at this place.

He sat in the car and waited for Santo.

‘There’s one thing I don’t understand.’

Santo dug in his pockets for his cigarettes.

‘Kiprowski. He didn’t have to go to Amrah. I don’t see why he did what he did.’

Santo set the cigarette on his lap. ‘He wanted to go. He had his own reasons.’ He found the lighter and tested the flame. ‘You remember that map? The road that didn’t exist.’

‘It came from CIPA.’

‘CIPA funded projects just to get rid of money. That road where the translator died – it used to be straight. They had a roadwork project that was supposed to improve connections between remote villages. Only they didn’t do anything. They dug up roads and re-laid them. They put a curve in a road that used to run straight.’

‘How did he know this?’

Santo lit the cigarette. ‘He asked Howell. Said the road was straight on all the maps. Howell came right out with it, told us about a number of projects just like that. None of them any use. Just a way to spend money.’

‘We’re here because of a curve in a road?’

‘I think you know there’s a little more to it than that.’

Santo blew out smoke. Both men looked ahead at Geezler’s house. Another incomplete project.

He woke with a headache, and felt more tired on waking than he had when he’d lain down. The room was otherwise empty, and Santo gone. The car also gone.

Santo had left an envelope on a small Singapore Airlines bag. The envelope contained a DVD and a note:
Watch the DVD, I’ll call
.

Santo sent two SMS messages mid-morning. Rem had risen properly, showered, and sat on the bed. He watched the sunlight slip across the floor and considered how he was going to get back home. It wasn’t just about deciding the next moment, the next couple of hours, but a larger, more difficult question. Why return? What to do?

After the second message, Rem slipped onto his knees and figured through the small complications of playing a DVD on the motel monitor. He sat on the floor and watched with the sound turned low.

On the first segment, a small image sank into the screen, large pixels vibrated unevenly, unstable, material shot on a handheld phone. The image dipped and opened to a figure in a doorway, silhouetted by giddy light, a voice, male, off-camera, close and wet: , a white hand pointing into the room.

A woman on her back on a bed, a sheet pulled up over her crotch, her breasts shining, her hand dug between her thighs. A man with a cigarette and credit card was told to , and the woman kicked the sheet back to her ankles.

Rem couldn’t guess her age, young, surely, without doubt, long black hair, dark eyebrows, so that she might be Middle Eastern, he could not be more specific, the camera divided her body into flat plains, light and dark.

Santo, now close, smoking, rubbing his gums, .

Another man, Pakosta, standing over the girl, .

Instructions: .

Pakosta in another shot, closer now, seen from the back, labouring, flopped forward, slow then active, naked on top of the girl. A leg in the way, interrupting. Then on her side with two men, Clark and Santo, the woman propped between them, their skin shining, making one animal out of the three.

.

Pakosta walking into the room, undressing and thrusting his hips as an example. .

A soft downlight now, a different shot a different camera, infinitely more detailed. Pakosta, bleary-eyed, face messed with powder, opening perfumes and smelling them, pouring out the contents. The woman spread-eagled on the bed. Then Clark thrusting over her head.

Pakosta laughing: .

Santo again, aggressive with the woman, working on top, turning her over, hands gripping her breasts, pinching hard, and no reaction from the girl. In this shot it is clear that she is young, clear also that she is not aware of her surroundings.

.

.

Santo rang about an hour after Rem had watched the footage. ‘Who was she?’

‘This isn’t about the girl.’

‘She was, what? Fifteen? Fourteen, fifteen?’

‘She was working at the hotel. What does it matter? Howell paid for her. You have no idea, and when we came back it was like nothing happened. You didn’t want to know. I don’t think you even asked.’

‘This has nothing to do with me. This is you, Pakosta, Clark, and Howell, and whoever that girl was. It has nothing to do with me.’

‘See. The thing is. That wasn’t the problem. The problem is that Howell had us. He took that footage for pleasure, and he wanted more, and he would have kept it going for as long as he wanted. He owned us once he had that material. He made that happen. The day after we returned he sent us emails with these attached.’

Santo wanted to know what Rem had done with the DVD.

‘We were toys,’ Santo said, his voice unnaturally flat. ‘You get that? Howell. Sutler. Geezler. We were the entertainment.’

✩

When the news came that Howell had died of his injuries, Santo called Rem. ‘That’s everyone except Geezler.’

‘You’re forgetting Sutler?’

‘You think he survived? They just haven’t found him yet.’

Watts: Samuels Knows Plenty

thekills.co.uk/watts

He searched for jobs in the paper, found a couple, none too promising, and wondered what time Santo would show. Blinked at the dog, and the dog blinked back. Chimeno’s death, still recent, gave a perspective to the upcoming hearings.

The car, a Lincoln, sat low on the back axle. Santo leaned against the driver’s door and appeared to be making a call – and sure enough, Rem’s cellphone began to ring. When Santo looked up Rem guessed he could be seen, framed by the window.

‘What’s up with the car?’ Rem asked.

Santo held up a hand in a static wave. ‘Heavy load.’

As Rem came out of the apartments to the adjoining lot, Santo walked about the car and unlocked the boot. The lot, filled with oil patches, stumpy grasses, pea gravel, and building blocks, in-filling for a building long removed, was overshadowed by the brick side of Rem’s building, blind except for one vertical strip of windows.