Gut Punch

Vroooooom. The mountain road was lit by the full moon and the high beams of the ’72 Alfa Romeo Montreal. Towering pines and moss covered boulders hugged the banks of each twist and turn in the road. An owl perched on the guardrail with its eyes glued to a crack in the rock face where mice hid. It saw the headlights down the road, screeched, and flew off. Vrooooom. Dusk slipped away but the passengers kept on their sunglasses. The driver, Victor, sported a pair of large yellow and teal cat-eye rims, the passenger, Carter, wore brown aviators. Victor had one hand on top of the wheel, the other brought an unfiltered spliff to his lips. He blew smoke out the cracked window and the song changed, another instrumental tune, a hypnotic jungle rhythm. Carter swayed his head a little, Victor tapped on the wheel.

It made the ride feel more like a sunset joy ride around Oahu, a nicer thing to imagine than the real reason for their ride. Far nicer.

“Who’s this?” Carter asked.

“Martin Denny,” Victor said and shifted gears as he approached a sharp bend. “My lady friend introduced me.”

“Can’t wait to make her acquaintance,” Carter said. 

“You won’t,” Victor fired back.

“Because she doesn’t exist?” Carter asked, joking around. Victor had talked about this “lady friend” of his months, and no one knew much of anything about her. No name, no cellphone background picture, nothing.

“Because I’m entitled to privacy when I want it, and so is she.”

“Fair enough,” Carter said and hummed a little to the tiki melody. “But you know everyone thinks you’re making it up.”

“Like I give a fuck.”

“Everyone thought you might be gay, just pretending to have a girlfriend that no one can meet as a cover.”

Victor shrugged. “Everyone’s wrong.” 

Carter tapped three fingers on his lips. “You know what this music reminds me of? A Hawaiian honeymoon. Gills went there on his, he was asking me the other day to cook a lūʻau feast for their anniversary. I guess he wants to recreate the magic, you know? Since he suspects Jorja is cheating on him…” he looked sideways at Victor. “You know anything about that?”

He made an annoyed huff and flicked the joint out the window. “Hey, what’re your thoughts on Abigail? I’ve had four sessions with her, what about you?”

Ah, Carter thought, so we’re changing the subject. “Five.”

“She asks the craziest fucking questions. ‘What goes through your head when you get stressed?’ Um, that I want it to stop? I’m basically a cortisol Chernobyl at this point.”

“She asked me the other day ‘where do you hold your tension?’” he imitated a woman’s voice.

“And?”

“I told her my shoulders sometimes ached,” Carter said. “She said that’s where she holds tension, too. I offered to trade Shiatsu massages,” he smiled, thinking of their back-and-forth, the way she stirred him, that foxy mind sorceress. “She said she preferred Swedish.”

“Haven’t you been getting bad headaches, ever since the uh, machete-to-the-skull episode?”

He poked at one of the staples. “That’s a problem for a real doctor to solve. I get them out in a week.” Carter’s doctors at the hospital told him that confusion and headaches were common with his type of brain injury, par for the course. Personality changes weren’t unheard of, either, they’d said, but it took some time to show. Once he was discharged, Kitsy got him all wound up by telling him that her first husband injured his head during a BMX race, and that after that he went from sweet and carefree to stoic with violent outbursts (which ended in his suicide a year later). Carter, if anything, was worried he was growing softer, less ruthless. He told himself that it didn’t matter, so long as it didn’t get in the way of doing his job until the end of his contract.

He looked out the window and wondered what Abigail would say if he divulged that he was worried about his personality changing in a way that made him incompatible for his job. After all, her whole purpose down there was to make them better at their jobs.

They came to a four-way stop and went left. Carter made a fist and released it a couple times. They were two turns away.

“Does she ask you about your relationship with Modric? She’ll always find a way to bring our conversations back to him.”

“Yeah but it makes sense, he’s the boss.”

Victor didn’t respond, something else was bugging him. Carter didn’t mind the conversation ending, he had to get his head right—get into that unfeeling, steadfast state of mind—for their destination. The Aston Martin pulled up to a private iron gate. Victor tore out some wires in the call box and the gate opened. They ascended the long driveway, contemporary lamp posts guiding their way. Carter checked the ammunition in his handgun, and secured it in his shoulder holster.

“You wanna handle the talking?” Carter asked Victor, who replied “Sure.” “Cool,” Carter said.

Victor cut the engine and headlights and the night went silent. He leaned up on the steering wheel and looked up at the mansion, lit by spotlights in the lawn.

“What a palatial monstrosity. Who builds a Mediterranean style mansion in the mountains of western Wyoming?”

“Well, Mr. Vallis is from Greece. He must’ve wanted a Parthenon to worship himself in,” Carter snickered. 

Victor groaned. “There’s nothing to worship about Mr. Vallis.” They got out of the car. “He’s a hospice home mogul who scams Medicaid, hasn’t given his nurses a raise in years. Oh, and let’s not forget he’s a total dickwad led by his noodle and his ego who knowingly gave our precious, sweet Autumn AIDS.” Victor lowered his voice and numbly said, “It’s not fair that she took her life and he gets on living in a stucco and straw villa.”

Carter held onto the car and did a leg stretch, a few more, and then a couple arm stretches. Victor lit a cigarette and moved his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Once you get him restrained, think I can get in there and bust his nut?” Victor asked. Carter paused, confused by what Victor had just asked. Victor saw the confusion and said, uneasy, “What?”

“Why do you want to bust his nut?” Carter asked for clarity.

“Because he fucking deserves it!” Victor said defensively, correcting a misunderstanding. Carter raised an eyebrow. Victor said, “Why would I bust my own nut? I don’t think I have the willpower, do you?”

“Victor, what does ‘bust’ mean to you?”

“Break something with a baseball bat? In this context, the, uh, sack.”

“No, man. ‘Bust a nut’ means to get off. Ejaculate.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Victor turned red as an ember and mumbled something Carter couldn’t hear. Carter massaged the back of his neck, he had more important things on his mind besides Victor’s sexual misconstructions. Returning to a normal volume, Victor said, “You’re positive no one’s home except him?” 

“Victor. If I say no one will be home, then I make it happen. How many times have we done this?” He started running in place, lifting his knees high to touch his hands.

“Look man, you know me. You know Tercyak’s are a borderline paranoid bunch. I’m seeing a shrink, you know,” he said and made a quick duck face smile. “You ready?”

Carter finished his warmup with shoulder rolls. “Yeah, this guy’s gonna be a runner. May I?” he pointed to Victor’s cigarette. Carter took a long drag, tasted Victor’s mango scented chapstick, and gave it back. 

“I hate this fucking gaudy place. Let’s make it quick. Two hundred if you can get him within two minutes,” Victor said.

Carter chewed on the thought. “Five hundred, and I do it in less than one.” They shook on it.

They jogged up the clam-shell shaped stairs two at a time. Carter adjusted his navy suit and the magnum revolver. He checked the inside the suit, where he’d had a tailor sew in a dozen little pockets to hold his other effects. Victor wiped his snakeskin loafers on the doormat, which had a large cursive V in the middle. He worked the Patek Philippe down the sleeve of his leather jacket and watched the secondhand.

The front door towered over fifteen feet tall. They waited. Carter could hear his heart in his ears, but it was steady. Carter had an air of cool resilience. Why waste nerves on a job?

The giant door opened slowly. Mr. Vallis, a forty-something olive skinned man with coarse ribbons of wavy black hair, appeared. Red velvet robe (open), no shirt (chest accustomed to hair removal products), and golden silk briefs (bikini cut, like a ladies). Barefoot. Easy peasy.

He looked at Victor, welcome surprise on his face, then at Carter. The cigar fell out of his mouth. Carter knew that look, familiar with the way realization spread outward from the pupil of the eyes, like an aerial view of a nuclear bomb.

“Mr. Vallis, won’t you let us in?” Victor asked innocently, eyes still on his wristwatch. 

Carter lunged just as Mr. Vallis reacted to close the heavy door. Digging his shoes in, pushing against the force of Mr. Vallis pushing back. After a few seconds the door went slack and Carter stumbled and fell into the foyer. 

“8…9…10…” Victor counted. 

Carter jumped up and ran after, leaping over a table Mr. Vallis had overturned. He made other obstacles—he threw an ornate vase at Carter, tipped over a cigar club chair, broke a glass sculpture on the floor—as Carter chased him through the living room into the vast and unused kitchen. Mr. Vallis took a paring knife from a drawer and Carter smiled. All this money and the guy didn’t own a decent chef’s knife. Oh well; he, too, knew how to play with knives. And his were sharper.

Mr. Vallis pushed a bar cart across the kitchen. He scrambled to open the glass door to the patio, making bloody footprints on the tile floor. Carter moved around the blood and chased him outside, a couple yards behind. 

A six inch Japanese steel dagger left Carter’s hand and bore into Mr. Vallis’s calf. He fell next to the pool. Carter jogged over, sparing a second—by his estimate he had several to spare—to admire the patio’s vine covered pergola. 

“Ela re malaka!” the man squealed. Carter pegged him into the grass and put his knee between the man’s shoulders. He took a zip tie from one of the tinker pockets in his jacket.

“Time!” he shouted for Victor to hear. Victor yelled something back, not loud enough. Carter saw him through the windows, tiptoeing around the debris. 

“What did I do? I didn’t speak! I don’t speak,” Mr. Vallis began to cry. They always did. “Ela re malaka…”

“Hey man I don’t speak Greek but I know malaka, and I don’t appreciate it” Carter said. He quite liked the word, the way it rolled off the tongue, and of course its meaning: wanker; idiot; softy. “My old line cook, Draga, taught me the word, and fuck did he make the most delicious moussaka… you gotta respect immigrants, man, that work ethic. That fuego.” Carter kicked away the tchotchke blade that Mr. Vallis began reaching for. “You wouldn’t win against a kite with that knife, buddy. But if you try, so help me…” He started pleading. Carter got off his back and kicked Mr. Vallis in the ribs. “Shut up.” 

Carter waited, studying his surroundings as Victor moseyed across the grass. The blue tiled pool, the Venus-de-Milo fountain, the lavender bushes and cypress, the potted fig trees, the terra-cotta tile roof. It really did appear like he was in fucking Greece. It was the weirdest thing, this job of his. He met the strangest people who lived the strangest lives.

“Time?” he asked Victor.

“Forty-one seconds. Never should’ve bet against Carter the Cauterizer,” Victor said, a swirl of sarcasm and bitterness.

“V—Victor, I didn’t tell no one swear to God, I didn’t—” Mr. Vallis tried to appeal. 

Victor kneeled by him on the grass. “No, you didn’t, you’re right.”

“The—then giatí…”

Victor sighed. “Because you lied to us, Mr. Vallis. One of our rules is don’t lie, not to us! When you gave Kitsy your medical records, you omitted Dr. Esslinger’s diagnosis. Try as I might I can’t figure out how one just forgets they have AIDS. Amnesia? Early onset dementia? Did we find any records of that, Carter?” 

“We did not,” Carter replied.

Victor stood up, fury burning in his eyes now. “A girl’s dead because of you.”

Lips trembling and bloody, Mr. Vallis spoke: “No, no no no. K—Kitsy wants to blame me because I wouldn’t—she advanced on me, and I rejected—she’s vindictive—I didn’t talk!”

Victor’s hands were fists by his side. His eyes hidden in the shadow of his thick brow. “I’m going to fucking kill him.” His delivery reminded Carter of Modric, the way it darkened the atmosphere, freezing time. “Give me your gun.” 

Carter didn’t. “Victor, have you ever killed someone?”

“GIVE ME THE GUN, CARTER!”

“No.” He shoved Victor away. “Save your first for someone who matters. Plus, Modric can’t make an example of Mr. Vallis if he’s dead before taking the stage.” 

“He’s… he’s going to kill me?” Mr. Vallis croaked.

“And nothing of value will be lost.” Victor spat on the zip-tied man. “I’ll be in the car,” he said and walked off.

Carter put on blue latex gloves and a surgical mask. Caution first. Mr. Vallis squirmed like a worm in wet grass, his golden undies shimmering in the moonlight. “Look man, this’ll be better if you just oblige,” he tried to say over Mr. Vallis, howling for his life. 

“I can offer you Chloroform if that’ll help.” Carter had plenty of fight still left, but this was only their first stop of the night and didn’t want to waste his strength.

Mr Vallis, resigned to his fate now, managed to say “Okay.” 

Carter took out a small bottle and cloth his jacket. 

After rolling the limp body into the Aston Martin’s trunk, he joined a stewing Victor in the front.

“Cleaned up?” the young man asked.

“You know it.”

They left the Mediterranean estate. Carter turned up the volume on another Martin Denny song. “So these other two… what’d’ya know about them?” he asked Victor.

“They’re in the band that plays at The Oxtail. Torque junkies. Bobby—one of Gill’s guys—was approached by them to acquire new identities, looking to end their contract early and run away.”

“Pity, pity. Hey, can we stop by Nona’s on Pine Crest? I’m craving some baklava gelato.”