The Voice Inside

15

Four years in San Quentin had given Rudy Cutter eyes in the back of his head. After a while, you could feel when someone was stalking you, and that was what kept you alive. He relied on that intuition now to make sure that no one was watching him, because the police and media had plastered his face everywhere.

He walked north on Stockton toward the tunnel that carved its way under Bush Street. He wore a dirty black hoodie, wraparound sunglasses, and jeans. He hadn’t shaved since he was released, and his beard was filling in like a wire brush. A backpack was slung over one shoulder. The crowded sidewalk made him wary, but no one looked at anyone else here. This was a melting pot where city neighborhoods converged. Upscale shops and hotels bled out of Union Square. Lawyers from the Financial Center squeezed into dim sum restaurants in Chinatown. Vape shops and massage parlors marked the fringe of the Tenderloin.

He stopped at a taqueria for lunch, but he took his order to go and ate it in the shadows of the Bush Street tunnel, where he could watch people come and go from the building across the street. White men in suits visited the Asian sauna. A homeless man with greasy hair limped past the liquor store and stuck his hand out at the customers. Two fifty-something women floated from the nail salon, caught up in their own world as if the people around them didn’t exist. Buses came and went, sucking up and belching out a dozen people at a time.

He waited an hour.

No cops. It was safe to go inside.

Rudy crossed the street to an eight-story apartment building. Fire escapes dangled over his head. He buzzed the number of an apartment on the fifth floor and pushed through the entrance door when it clicked open. He took the stairs rather than the elevator to avoid being seen. He found the number he was looking for and drummed his knuckles on the apartment door. As he waited, he listened to the empty hallway, but all he heard was the noise of the television inside.

An eighty-year-old man in a wheelchair opened the door. His gray hair cropped up in tufts, and his skin was pallid and saggy. He had a thick crocheted blanket spread over his lap, and his feet jutted out from under the blanket, in worn brown dress shoes with no socks. He wore blind man’s sunglasses, and his face pointed straight ahead, not looking up or down.

“I called a couple hours ago,” Rudy said. “You’ve got a Taser for sale?”

“Yeah, yeah, come in.”

The man wheeled backward, and Rudy eyed the studio apartment, which didn’t look much bigger than his San Quentin cell. He could see everything with a glance. A twin bed against the wall, sheets tangled. The efficiency kitchen. The bathroom with toilet and shower. A window looking out on the street. The walls had chipped yellow paint and were decorated with an odd mix of movie posters. He saw Sean Connery in Goldfinger. Herbie the Love Bug. A porn flick with Marilyn Chambers.

A square twenty-four-inch television, balanced on cinder blocks, blared Jeopardy! at a volume that made Rudy want to cover his ears.

“My name’s Jimmy Keyes,” the man barked. “Who are you?”

“Carl Smith,” Rudy lied.

Keyes snorted at the name, as if he didn’t believe for a second that it was real. His lips pulled back from brown teeth. “How did you find me?”

“You put up a flier in a bar a couple blocks away.”

“And you want to buy my Taser, Carl Smith?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

Rudy shrugged and made up a story. “Somebody’s been hassling my wife. I want her to carry some protection.”

“Yeah? Why not buy a new one? Why come to me?”

“I had a problem with the law a few years ago. I think traditional sellers might not be too crazy to sell to me.”

“You realize these babies have serial numbers, right? You fire this thing, it sprays little ID tags. Easiest thing in the world for the police to trace it back to me. If you use it, I get cops at my door. I don’t like that.”

“That’s why I’m paying you two hundred dollars more than it’s worth,” Rudy said.

“Fair point,” Keyes agreed.

“Why does a blind man have a Taser, anyway?” Rudy asked.

“I wasn’t always blind. Damn cataracts.”

Rudy wandered to the window over the street. He glanced out at the fire escape. As he did, he slipped a pair of plastic gloves out of his pocket and silently pulled them over his fingers. He turned away from the window and lifted a foam pillow from the twin bed beside the wall. Bending down close to Keyes, he waved a hand in front of the old man’s sunglasses, no more than an inch away. Keyes didn’t flinch. Rudy grabbed a wooden chair from the small kitchen table and sat on it and put the pillow on the floor next to him.

“So where’s the Taser?” he asked.

“Where’s the money?” Keyes asked.

Rudy slipped a stack of bills from his pocket and slapped it in the old man’s open palm. Keyes closed his fingers over the cash.

“I better not find out you’re shorting me,” Keyes said.

“It’s all there.”

“Okay. The Taser’s in that case on the floor.”

Rudy spotted a small hard-shell case by the wall. He placed the case on his lap and unlatched it. Inside was a black-and-yellow Taser and four cartridges, each packed with probes and fifteen feet of wire. One of the cartridges already had its shipping cover removed. It was ready to go.

“You ever use one of these things?” Keyes asked.

“Yeah, I know how they work.”

“Well, I’m not taking any chances with you being an amateur. Let me show you.”

Keyes flicked his fingers at him, and Rudy slid the case into the old man’s lap. Without tilting his head down, Keyes gracefully removed the Taser and cradled it in his wrinkled hand.

“The battery pack is fully charged and loaded. I always keep it that way. The safety is right here. Down is safe, and you click it up when you want to fire. The cartridge clicks on the front. Easy peasey, like this, see? Just don’t stick your fingers in there, got it?”

“Got it,” Rudy said.

Keyes flicked up the safety switch. A red laser dot appeared on the apartment wall.

“You can turn on an LED light for better sighting at night,” he said, “or you can just use the laser. This thing fires two probes, which is what completes the electrical circuit and turns the person you’re shooting at into jelly. It works fine through clothes, but don’t be more than ten feet away, or you’ll probably miss. Key is to aim the laser high on the chest. One probe goes straight, and the other goes about eight degrees down. You don’t want the second probe missing between the guy’s legs.”

“Right.”

“Like this,” Keyes told him.

The old man swiveled the gun, and the red laser dot appeared like a shiny bead on Rudy’s chest. Rudy shouted in alarm, but before he could leap out of the way, Keyes fired. Instantaneously, Rudy collapsed backward onto the floor, the chair spilling free. His limbs twitched; he was rubber, unable to control any of his muscles. His body was on fire, his blood carrying acid to every nerve end, corroding him from inside.

“See, the thing is, Rudy Cutter,” Keyes told him, yanking off his sunglasses and pulling the trigger again and again to add more juice to the probes, “I’ve only got a cataract in one eye, and I know exactly who you are. You’re that piece of shit who just got out of prison after killing all those women. Now here you are, looking to buy a Taser from me? I don’t think so. And you didn’t grab that pillow off my bed so you could take a nap, did you? You’re not concerned about the ID tags this thing blows off, because you figure when the cops trace the tags back to me, I’ll be dead on the floor with that pillow on my face.”

Keyes reached between his legs under the crocheted blanket and came out with a black-handled revolver. He dropped the Taser on the floor and then used his thumb to drag back the hammer and cock the weapon. He pointed it at Rudy, who lay on his back as the jolts of current finally drained from his body.

Rudy felt pummeled, as if a hammer had come down on all his bones. The pain rolled like marbles around his brain. He propped himself up, balancing on his elbows. His breathing came heavily, and his eyes stung as he squinted at the barrel of the gun, pointed at his head, no more than six feet away. His fists clenched and unclenched, in a tic of humiliation and rage. He didn’t like being outsmarted. Not by Jess Salceda. Not by Jimmy Keyes. Not by anyone.

“So now what happens?” Rudy gasped, trying to calm his frenzied heartbeat so he could think. “You shoot me?”

“Now I call the cops, and we wait until they get here.”

“You assaulted me,” Rudy said. “You’re the one they’re going to arrest.”

“Oh, I’ll take my chances. The cops are going to think it’s pretty interesting that you’re here trying to buy a weapon off the books.”

“Look, you’re right about who I am. I lied. The Taser is for my own defense, that’s all. Every vigilante on the street is looking to kill me. They want to be heroes by taking me down.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Keyes told him. “I may do that myself. I’ve got a granddaughter in her twenties. Same age as the women you cut up. She’d be a lot safer if I put a bullet in your head. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a story, you know. You rushed me, I shot you. No one’s going to care what happens to you, Rudy Cutter. So reach back and grab the phone and toss it over here before I change my mind and drill one into your skull, okay?”

Rudy sat up and put his hands in the air. “Take it easy. Whatever you say.”

“Slowly. I have an itchy trigger finger.”

“I couldn’t move fast if I wanted to,” Rudy said. “That thing packs a punch.”

He got up from the floor with a groan. His body swayed from dizziness, but he exaggerated his movements to make himself look more unsteady than he really was. The effects of the Taser were short-lived. Below him, Keyes sat in the wheelchair, looking small. Behind the old man’s cockiness, Rudy could see a nervous tremble of fear. Keyes tried to hold the revolver steady, but his hand shook, and he squinted to stay focused. His good eye was worse than he let on.

Rudy grabbed the phone from its cradle. The television was still on and still loud, blaring out the voice of Alex Trebek. He turned toward the old man and stopped, the muscles in his face twitching. Keyes watched him, jumpy and jittery. Rudy’s eyes never left the barrel of the gun. It wobbled like a toy in the man’s hand, pointing left, right, up, and down.

“Here,” Rudy said, extending the phone but keeping it just out of the old man’s grasp.

“Toss it.” Keyes leaned forward, his empty hand stretching out.

“Whatever you say.”

Rudy threw the phone over the old man’s head and then dropped to one knee and grabbed for the gun. Keyes fired in panic, sending a bullet into the wall above the television. Rudy’s hand locked around the brittle wrist that held the gun, shoving the old man’s arm sideways and squeezing it in a vise until Keyes loosened his fingers. The revolver dropped to the wooden floor.

He leaned in to the man’s terrified face.

“See, the thing is, Jimmy Keyes, I really don’t like people getting in the way of my plans,” Rudy whispered.

He put one gloved hand behind the man’s head. The other clenched his neck, choking off any sound. He watched Keyes’s eyes widen, his mouth forming an O, knowing what was going to happen. With one quick, vicious snap, Rudy shoved the old man’s skull forward until his neck broke with a sickening crack. Keyes’s whole body jerked, as if he’d taken a shot from the Taser. Air gurgled from the man’s lungs with a long, labored sigh.

Rudy straightened up. He listened to the roar of the game show, then used the remote control to switch off the television. In the background, the building was silent. If anyone had heard the shot, they didn’t care. No one came running. No one called the cops.

His head still buzzed from the electric shock. He disentangled himself calmly from the probes and wires of the Taser and then unzipped his backpack and stuffed the Taser and the revolver inside. When he was done, he did a survey of the studio to make sure that there was nothing left behind that might point to his presence there. No fingerprints. No DNA.

The old man wasn’t quite gone yet. His lungs gurgled.

Rudy was hungry. He checked the refrigerator and found a recent deli bag of sliced turkey. He sat on the bed, finished the turkey, and watched the traffic crawling on the street outside as he waited for Keyes to die.