Because their daughter’s killer’s mother wished it.
Rudy says, “Pay attention, Champ. Motivation number one is you’ll have your third payback out of the way.”
“You never told me what the second one was.”
“I’ll tell you tonight. The second motivation is even stronger. I can’t wait to tell you.”
“Just say it, okay? Say it and get out of here, before Lissie sees us.”
“Okay, okay! Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I was just trying to build suspense. The second motivation is, this is a fight to the finish.”
“What?”
“Ain’t it great? I mean, two pansies are gonna fight until one of them is pronounced dead.”
“No! You can’t! Please don’t make me do this. Wait—you actually can’t force me!”
“Excuse me?”
“You said so yourself.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Yesterday you said you don’t make people do things they don’t want to do. You give them two, sometimes three choices, like with Jinny.”
“I said that?”
“You did. Look, give me another choice. What’s my alternative?”
He looks confused. “Well, if I said it, I guess I’m bound.”
“Okay, then. So give me something else.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. When we pick you up tonight, I’ll give you an alternative, if you still want one.”
“I’ll want one.”
“We’ll see. But in case you choose to fight, bring a pair of shorts and tennis shoes, unless you want to fight barefoot.”
“Are you listening to me? I’m not gonna fight tonight!”
“I heard you, Champ. Jeez, I’m not deaf. I’m just saying, in case you change your mind, that’s what you should bring to wear.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“See you at seven, Champ.”
“Stop calling me that!”
Chapter 29
Lissie is still groggy from the sedative, but with each hour that passes, her condition improves. Perkins told me to put the whole capsule in her drink, but half that amount would have been more than enough.
I’ve got a good excuse for going out tonight. I tell her Perkins is coming to pick me up for a meeting with my new client.
“When am I going to meet this Thomas Jefferson?” she says. “Will he be in the car tonight?”
“No, Perkins is taking me to the airport to meet his private jet. I think I’m meeting the CEO, too. But we shouldn’t be out too late.”
“I’m not used to these late night meetings. Is this going to be a regular thing?”
“No. It’s just getting acquainted stuff.”
By four in the afternoon, Lissie has recovered enough to wonder why I’m acting so strangely. “I can’t remember you ever being more attentive, and yet you’re completely distracted. What gives?”
I’m attentive because if worse comes to worse I could get beat to death tonight, in which case I’ll never see her again. I’m distracted for the same reason.
“I’m just worried about you,” I say. “And nervous about my meeting tonight.”
“You’ll be great,” she says.
Actually, distracted isn’t the best word to describe how I’m feeling. What I am is scared shitless. It’s clear to me that Rudy wants me to fight, so the choice he gives me will probably be something worse than killing someone (or being killed) in the boxing ring.
But what could be worse than that?
At seven o’clock Rudy and Perkins pick me up and take me to an abandoned warehouse a half mile behind the airport at Standiford Field. There are two huge luxury busses in the parking lot, and two bouncers guarding the front door.
“What’s in there?” I ask Rudy.
“The cage.”
“What cage?”
“The one you’re fighting in.”
The cold sensation floods my body again. I know I’m pale with fear. I try to speak, but my voice comes out in a whisper. I swallow and try again. “What about our deal?”
“We’ll get you in the dressing room, get your hands wrapped, and then I’m going to show you a quick video of your opponent. After that, if you still don’t want to fight, I’ll give you an alternate choice.”
“Okay.”
Chapter 30
The dressing room is nothing more than a woman’s bathroom with two stalls and an oversized powder room that includes two sinks, a large mirror, a fabric couch, and a small Formica table with two scuffed, wooden stools, one of which I’m sitting on. On the counter, next to a sink, is a small monitor. Standing over me, applying tape to my hands is Gus, a grizzled old guy with cauliflower ears and a hopelessly broken nose. Gus, I’m told, is my cut man.
While Gus wraps my hands, Rudy and one of the bouncers hook up a video camera to the TV monitor. They’re watching something on the screen, but their broad backs are blocking my view. At one point the bouncer guy turns and looks at me and shakes his head, which I take as a bad sign.
“All right,” Rudy says. “Now rewind it a bit. Okay, that’s good. Hit the pause button. Okay, that’ll work.”
They both turn to face me, but they’re still blocking the screen. When Gus says he’s done with my hands, Rudy asks him to step outside for a few minutes. When he opens the door to leave I can hear people yelling and chanting.
“The natives are getting restless,” Rudy says.
The door closes and Rudy tells the bouncer guy to cut the lights.
Before he starts rolling the tape, Rudy says, “You wanted me to tell you the second thing you’ve done to pay us back.” He gestures to the monitor. “It’s this.”
The next three minutes are the worst of my life.
Afterward, when the guy flips the lights back on, the face I see in the mirror staring back at me is tear-streaked and filled with grief. I jump to my feet and run to the toilet and puke. I fall to my knees, sobbing, and puke again. I roll around on the floor, crying, moaning like a wounded animal. Minutes pass while my mind works to comprehend what I saw on the screen. When I finally get to my feet, there are two things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt: first, my life, as I knew it, is over. Second, I’m going to kill my opponent in the cage tonight, or die trying.
Rudy enters the doorway and calls out to me. “You ready to fight?”
I come out of the stall and stumble into him. He backs up a few steps and we’re in the powder room again. I’m blind with rage, but I want to take my fury to an even higher level. I motion to the TV monitor.
“Play it again,” I say. “In slow motion.”
Rudy smiles broadly. “Whatever you say, champ!”
He rewinds the tape, presses a button, and nods to the bouncer to cut the lights.
I’m standing three feet from the screen, bracing my hands on the countertop. As the tape starts, I hear a loud drumming sound and look around to find the source.
It’s me.
I’m tapping my fingers on the countertop, uncontrollably.
Like Jinny’s husband, Pete Rossman had done.
I turn my attention back to the screen…
Chapter 31
The quality of the video is excellent. There’s a time signature on the bottom right. It starts at 1:05 a.m. with a shot of me, Rudy and Richie getting in the car and driving away. There’s a slight jerk where they spliced the tape, and now it’s 1:09 am, and the same camera picks up a man entering the garage. He’s dressed in black, wearing a black ski mask similar to the ones Rudy and Richie had on. He removes a set of keys from his pocket and unlocks the door to my home. The camera switches to a view from the upstairs hallway, where we see the man climbing up the stairs. He pauses at our bedroom door, knocks, then waits a few seconds, then slowly opens the door and enters.
Another camera picks up the action in the bedroom. At this point it hasn’t dawned on me that someone has gone to the trouble to place all these cameras in my home and garage, and they’ve obviously been there long enough to be tested for lighting and angles. It also hasn’t dawned on me yet that the garage cameras would have revealed all the places I hid the cash.
What I do understand with total clarity is that a man is in my bedroom, standing over Lissie’s sleeping, helpless body. Though it’s dark in the room, I can see him push her shoulder a couple of times to see if she moves. She doesn’t. Then he walks over to the doorway and turns on the light switch.
With the lights on, and the time showing 1:12 a.m., a camera directly over the bed takes over and shows the man kissing Lissie’s face. The ski mask proves to be a hindrance to his intimacy, so he removes it, along with the rest of his clothing. Then he kisses her passionately, and starts removing her nightie.
The tape jumps again and it’s 1:16 a.m. The man is performing oral sex on my wife’s comatose body. I feel a white hot boil in the pit of my stomach. My heart aches as I watch her rape take place. Lissie trusted me and I want to die. I gave her a sedative, rendered her helpless, only to be violated by this human pond scum, and there is no pit deep enough to hide my anguish. I’m vaguely aware of the moaning sound coming from my mouth. I can taste the tears and snot dripping into my mouth and I want to fucking die.
I’ve never felt so powerless, never loathed myself to this degree. I want it to stop. If only I could go back in time and somehow make it stop. But it won’t stop. In fact, the brutalization of my wife’s helpless body has only just begun.
The tape jumps again and it’s 1:28 a.m. The maggot is doing my wife missionary style. Every now and then he turns and winks at the camera. He stops for a minute to arrange her body in the most degrading pose the perverted mind of a rapist could imagine. Then he brutally assaults her.
He finishes quickly, and lies down beside her, spent. But he’s not finished. Oh no. In fact, he’s just getting started.
The tape jumps again, and it’s 2:25 a.m. He’s doing my sacred Lissie doggie style, slapping her ass, pulling her hair, mugging for the camera. The tape jumps again, three more times over the next two hours, but I can’t share the unspeakable details of what he does to my poor Lissie.
But I know who he is.
I recognized him the instant he removed his ski mask.
In a few minutes I’ll be in a cage with him, and I will do everything in my power to kill him.
Chapter 32
At first, seeing him in my bedroom in the dark with my wife, I thought it had to be Pete Rossman, and figured he was getting me back for sleeping with his wife.
But it wasn’t Pete Rossman.
It was my best friend Mike.
Mike, the guy who started the whole Wish List disaster, the guy who filled out his choices first, and told me his dream date was Katrina Bowden, the receptionist from 30 Rock.
“Mike’s first wish was to fuck my wife,” I say to Rudy.
“Yeah, I asked him about that.”
I stop crying long enough to look at Rudy’s face. “What did he say?”
Rudy shrugs. “Said you’re a sap who doesn’t appreciate what you’ve got.”
I nod. “Anything else?”
“You sure you want to hear it?”
I feel my jaw tighten. I release it, but it tightens again. “Yeah, I want to hear it.”
“He said he’s wanted to fuck her for years.”
I nod.
“He also said she’s a helluva fuck.”
I know Rudy’s pushing my buttons. I want to say something to him, curse him, kill him. But I deserve all this and more. And anyway, there’s nothing he can say to make me feel any worse than I already do.
Except for this:
“Oh, Mike also wanted me to thank you for making it so easy. Said he loves the way you dressed her up, drugged her, and left her all alone, helpless, on your marital bed. And…”
I nod.
…“he said he can’t wait to fuck her again.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Rudy says, “I don’t want to rush you, Champ, but that sound you hear outside means they’re ready for you.”
I look at him and realize there’s something he hasn’t told me yet, something he’s saving.
“What haven’t you told me about Mike?” I say.
“I’ll tell you when you get in the cage, just before the bell sounds.”
Chapter 33
I’m in an iron cage, glaring at Mike. He’s meeting my stare, and has a strangely determined look on his face. We’re surrounded by forty men in various stages of inebriation. The cage is small, maybe twelve feet by twelve, and is completely enclosed. There are no announcements, no introductions. The referee tells the crowd what to expect:
“Each round is three minutes, with a one-minute break. There will be as many rounds as needed until one man is pronounced dead. Can I have the corner men, please?”
The two bouncers enter the cage and stand at opposite ends. They are barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only shorts, and looking very mixed martial artsy. The referee continues:
“If at any time the action stops for fifteen seconds, the corner men will get involved. And you know what that means!”
I have no idea what it means, but the “crowd” obviously knows, because they’re cheering wildly.
As the referee directs us to our corners, I see Rudy standing just outside the cage behind my stool. The crowd noise is growing.
“Here’s the thing,” Rudy says.
“Yeah?”
“Mike’s fourth wish.”
“What about it?”
“We haven’t granted it yet. He has to kill you to get it.”
The crowd noise is almost deafening. They smell blood and want the carnage to start.
“Tell me!”
Rudy looks at me in a way I could never forget, and yells, “We didn’t let him do what he wanted.”
“What are you saying?”
As the bell sounds to begin the first round I hear Rudy shouting above the crowd noise.
“He wants to chain her to his basement wall for the rest of her life!”
I turn to look at Rudy and feel a fist crash into the back of my skull.
The blow sends me reeling, and I’m knocked stiff-legged into the side of the cage. Mike jumps on my back and starts raining blows on the top of my head. Between his weight, my being off balance, and his furious attack, I go down. Had Mike ridden me to the floor it might have been over before I landed the first punch. But Mike’s left leg gets hooked under my hip, and when I hit the canvas, his leg takes the brunt of my weight. When I roll over, he grabs his knee in agony. I quickly jump on him and start flailing away until I can barely breathe. Mike’s arms were pinned under my knees throughout the assault, which means I landed at least forty clean shots to his face and head. But when I stop swinging to inspect the damage, I’m shocked to see I haven’t even drawn blood.
I can’t believe I’m this exhausted. Meanwhile, Mike is re-energized. He flips me off him and gets to his feet. He’s favoring his left leg, but it’s not keeping him from coming after me. Just as I’m about to stand, he tackles me and bites the back of my upper thigh. I let out a yelp and try to get away, but he’s got his legs wrapped around mine and I can’t get out from under him. He continues to bite my leg and I’m almost delirious with pain, but before he can do any more damage, the bell rings to end round number one.
