The Bitterest Pill

Nineteen

The white, unmarked van crunched along the stone-and-dirt service road in the last flicker of sunlight. The kid had assured Arakel that the service road was hardly ever used and that even if they were stopped, they could claim they were lost.

“It’s easy to screw up. People do it all the time. The roads in the park aren’t very clearly marked.”

Arakel had already made the calls to the people he had been ordered to alert, and as the van bounced, tires spitting out gravel, his hands shook and the nausea rose up in him. It was all he could do not to have them pull over so he could get out to vomit. Stojan, at the wheel, and Georgi, in the front passenger seat, looked back at Arakel, then at each other. They smirked, shaking their heads.

Stojan said, “What is wrong, Boss, you are being seasick?”

The two men in the front seats had a good laugh at that. They exchanged some words in their native tongue and laughed harder still. Arakel knew both men up front as brutal, unfeeling thugs. That was their niche in the organization, but Arakel also suspected one or both of them as plants, spies for the men above Mehdi and himself.

“Slow down,” Arakel said as they neared the equipment shed. “Stop.”

The van skidded to a halt on the loose gravel. Stojan turned to face his boss. “Open the door for the kid.”

Arakel pulled the handle and slid the side door open. Chris Grimm stepped out into the open from the side of the metal shed and hopped into the van. He grinned at the sight of Arakel and slid the door shut behind him. The van started moving almost immediately. The grin slid right off the kid’s face at the sight of the men up front. Arakel noticed.

“Don’t worry about them,” he said, patting Chris’s shoulder, smiling. “They’re here to protect you. No one will bother us with them around. Come on, once we get out of town, we’ll get you something to eat. You haven’t eaten all day, have you?”

The kid relaxed. There it was, Arakel’s talent on display. In spite of Chris’s troubles and fear of the men in the front of the van, Arakel had put him at ease.

“Stojan, stop at a McDonald’s or a place like that once we get out of Paradise.”

“But—”

“Do not defy me,” Arakel said, not quite believing he talked to the brute that way. “We have time for the boy to eat.”

The big man shrugged.

“So, Chris, where have you left your stash? Will the police find it in your home if they search?”

The kid smiled at him. “I’m not stupid. No. I have a storage unit that I pay for with some of the money I make.”

Arakel raised his eyebrows. “Can we stop there and pick up the stash? We do not want to leave anything that might incriminate you here. This way, the police can prove nothing when you come back to town.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Good. Good. We get your stash and then you eat.”

Two hours later, Chris was very grim indeed. He was tied to a chair in a warehouse Stojan and Georgi used for such things. Chris’s face was a bloody, pulpy mess covered in tears and snot. Unconscious, his eyes were already purple and swollen shut. The thugs had first broken all of his fingers, then worked their way up his legs. But Arakel put a stop to that when Stojan took out his knife and threatened to emasculate the boy.

“No!” he had shouted. “You will not do that.”

“We will know the truth,” Stojan said, as if he were about to cut the heel off a loaf of bread.

“We already know the truth. He never spoke with the cops and he’s told us the names of the people who knew he dealt.”

“You are being a foolish, foolish man, Boss,” Georgi, the quieter of the two enforcers, said. “We have to be knowing if anyone knows people more than him. Is he telling anyone about you? This we must be sure of.”

Arakel couldn’t argue with Georgi’s logic. If Chris had shared anything with his clients about Arakel, it could be a major problem. “All right, but not that,” he said, pointing at Stojan’s blade. “Not that.”

Again, Stojan and Georgi shook their heads at him. Stojan closed his knife, and that was when they went to work on the boy’s face. After a half-hour of that, it seemed to Arakel that the two thugs were hurting the kid more for their own amusement than to get anything more out of him.

“I swear. I swear,” the boy had said a hundred times. “I didn’t tell anybody anything.”

No matter how they hurt him, he kept repeating it. Arakel believed it the first time he said it. Stojan and Georgi didn’t believe it or didn’t want to believe it regardless.

Stojan looked at his phone for the time, looked at Chris, then nodded to Georgi. He said something Arakel understood, even if he didn’t speak their language. They were going to wake the kid up and start in on him again. Two thunderous explosions echoed in the cavernous warehouse. It was only after some of the smoke had cleared that Arakel realized the pistol Mehdi had given him was in his shaking hand and that he had ended Chris Grimm’s suffering forever.

Stojan took the weapon from his hand and thumped him on the back. “You are having more balls than we thought, Boss.” He waved to Georgi. “Get the bottle. Someone is needing a drink.”