co-author credit on my site!
Here's the story:
Body Bag
The big blue duffle was right where I’d been told it would be. As soon as I’d finished wiping up the blood (wearing gloves so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints), I dumped all the stuff out of the bag and crammed the body in. Had to practically break his legs to do it—guy was sure tall—but I figured he wouldn’t mind now.
It was a short walk to the subway station. All the way I kept my head down, trying not to look people in the eye. But trying not to look like I was trying not to look, if you know what I mean.
I had a bad moment inside the station when a transit cop called out, and I froze. The bag almost slipped off my shoulder, and I was terrified that it would fall to the ground and the zipper would come undone.
Turned out his target was some kid who’d jumped the turnstile.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I hurried down the steps just in time to miss my train.
Take the D train to Parkwood station, the voice on the phone had told me last night, and then the Bank Street exit. A cab will be waiting for you at street level.
Sounds easy enough. Sure. Get on the subway with a dead body in your duffle bag, and stand for four stops. The bag was so big it kept bumping people. I got a lot of dirty looks, but at least no one looked suspicious.
When I got to Parkwood, I was the only one getting off. I couldn’t find the Bank Street exit. Three separate exits, and not one was the one I needed.
Then I saw the sign, way down the other end of the platform. I prayed that one, there was a working escalator, and two, the guy in the cab was patient.
The cab was waiting for me right at the station exit. I shoved the bag in before me.
“Mr. Robinson?” the cabbie asked. I nodded.
“You got the . . . package?”
“Of course I do.”
“Fine, fine, just checking.” He pulled away without turning on the meter. I wondered if he was a real cab driver or someone who worked for the man I was going to see.
Could be both—maybe he’d gotten in the same kind of mess I had. Maybe bringing me here was the favor he had to do.
Wish I was that lucky.
“D’you mind the radio?” he asked. He had it tuned to one of the talk stations.
“No, that’s fine.” Anything to distract me from thinking about what I had done, or worse, what would become of me.
The whole way there, I couldn’t stop thinking that this might be the last few moments of my life. Once I got to where I was going, the guy would probably kill me. Why not? He didn’t need me anymore. Besides, if he left me alive, I might testify against him at some point. Why take that chance?
The bag kept bumping against my leg. I had put it on the floor of the cab instead of the trunk, just so I wouldn’t forget it. As if I could.
Finally the cab pulled into a driveway, and stopped.
“Do I owe you any money?” I asked.
“Nope,” said the cabbie. “All taken care of.”
As soon as I got out, dragging the bag along with me, he drove off.
Terrific. How was I gonna get home?
Then a scary thought hit me. Maybe I wasn’t going home. Maybe the guy had brought me here to have me killed, and the only ride home I’d need would be a hearse to the funeral home.
The house looked like . . . a house. I don't know what I was expecting. Something out of a movie, maybe. One of those gangster things where the don lives in a huge mansion with lots of big men in dark suits around him. This looked like any house on my block. Not like the abode of a man who had given orders to kill eight people.
I knocked on the door.
After a moment, it opened.
The man who opened the door for me seemed to have been expecting me. Without a word, he ushered me inside.
Once inside, I looked around a bit. The entry hall was green and gold—green carpet, gold-patterned wallpaper. I could see stairs off to the right in the same green/gold color scheme,
“Mr. Stanton will see you in the kitchen,” the man said, showing me through a white swinging door. There in front of me, seated at an ordinary-looking table, was the individual rumored to be behind more than a dozen local deaths or disappearances, most of them cops.
John “The Hammer” Stanton—I’m sure you’ve heard of him. As dirty as they say he is, no one was ever able to dig up solid evidence connecting him to any crime.
I realized I was holding the bag in front of me, and put it down on the floor. Then I worried about blood leaking onto the clean tiles, and picked it up again.
Stanton looked up. “Sit down, Joey.”
I sat.
He nodded to the man behind me, who left us alone.
“It’s done?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. I held the bag out to him, but he waved it away.
“I’ll take care of that later.” He was closing up a checkbook, and I wondered if it was the famous checkbook with which he’d supposedly tried to buy off the D. A. six years ago.
Your turn.
Oh, and just for the record, I started this long before seeing "The Sopranos", so any similarities are unintentional.
