The story so far: A serial killer known as “The Begrudger” has assassinated a number of billionaire CEOs, triggering a huge wave of unrest in the city.
Detective Ronnie Hurtler, now a major suspect in the killings, has found the real killer: none other than his own lover Veronika, a trans woman who’s been helping him track down the keycode to a vast cryto-wallet fortune.
Now he’s hiding out in her apartment, while the City PD and the feared ‘Beyond’ Bill Simons and his elite unit are searching for him…
CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER -
Graphic violence, anti-trans slurs
As the two felons snuggle and spoon so sleepily now, attempting to wish away the countervailing forces, to keep them at bay for a single night, or even for just an hour, those same forces are enfolding a different reality all about them. Lovers are often like castaways on a fragile raft in an ocean of famished sharks. They clasp together, one to the other, as the fibrous bindings that held the palmtree trunks come loose and fray, and rough gunmetal muzzles of the killers begin to nudge their vessel from its course.
The deployment of the Corruption and Special Crimes Unit’s elite TAC squad is just as footfall-soundless and low-gliding swift as any law-enforcement enthusiast could wish for. Beyond Bill Simon’s Termination And Control boys are the crème de la crème of SWAT teams, and they give a good slealthy show.
They do literally nothing else all day every day than rehearse the infiltration, clearance, and exfiltration of multiple types of contested urban spaces. In dry runs and rehearsals they’ve killed untold thousands of hypothetized targets. So when they lope wolfwise with concentrated intent into the designated area of operations, they come swathed in a mystic aura of tactical mastery. They’re total pros.
Here they come now. Filing in stacks of three, one left, one right, gliding up the hallway. Here they come: snaking up the fire escape to cluster round bedroom windows like crafty goblins. This is a stealth op, so flashbangs and beanbag shotguns are very much not mandated tonight. Only silenced weapons and tasers are authorized, with live rounds to be targeted non-lethally to knees and elbows by preference.
The popping of windows and doorjambs is pneumatic, with only a slight sigh to betray the intrusion. Penetration of this sleeping space is steady and unfussy. Already these black-clad figures are inside, slinking noiselessly towards Veronika’s bedroom. Their fingers in a dumb-show of quick talk, they clear living room and bathroom. Lasers atop their rifles spin and cluster in corners like some arrhythmic nightclub lightshow without any music.
All this while Ron and Veronika here in this room, Alicia over in that room, sleep soundly. There’s no sound at all when the bedroom door opens, its habitual creak silenced by a discreet application of tactical lube. Ron only wakes when he hears the shriek from the girl in the next room. A triskelion of red lasers illumines his forehead and stays locked in place there as he slowly rises up in bed, hands raised and open. He knows better than to move suddenly. So does Veronika. Not an amateur in sight here tonight.
The bedroom lights click on, and Beyond Bill Simons stands in the doorway with cold threat in his eyes. Everyone – Ronnie and Veronika, and the ski-masked operators, all blink rapidly in the lightbulb glare. Bill motions to his TAC boys, who snap to it. Ron and Veronika are pushed to their knees on the bedroom rug, naked. Veronika’s anomalous body draws sighs and murmurs from the TAC boys despite all their steely discipline. There’s a thick hormonal energy building up in the room’s air around the organ on that incongruously curvy body.
Beyond Bill is a mild-mannered old man in demeanor, not at all given to overt displays of wanton cruelty despite his chilled gray stare. He rummages through Veronika’s wardrobe and finds a rose satin robe and a big bathtowel. He throws the robe to Veronika and the towel to Ron. They cover themselves up, still kneeling.
Alicia is hauled into the room, dressed in pink cotton jammies, and forced to her knees beside them. The agents back up a little on Bill’s signal and give him some room. He sits on the side of the bed beside the captives. The SWAT guys gesture, and the detainees kneel-shuffle round to face him.
“So, Detective Hurtler — Ron…” he makes a little mock-salute. “I felicitate you heartily on a job well done. You’ve traced the cryptowallet key, or whatever the hell it’s called, but at the same time it appears that you may have become something of a cause célèbre yourself.”
He crosses his legs and clasps both hands on his knee, leaning forward to engage in some droll pleasantries. “Could it be that you, Detective Hurtler, are the Begrudger? The much-feared vigilante whom all seek far and wide?”
He leans back, smiling widely. “I can scarcely credit it. Certainly not officially. It would surely be a black eye for the city police department were it to become known that the detective assigned to investigate these murders, one so grievously injured in the course of the investigation and decorated for bravery, was the actual perpetrator of these horrific killings?”
Ron looks at him, speaks level and clear. “But, Bill… Yes. It’s true. I am the killer.”
Beyond Bill scoffs. The steel eyes are unchanged but his sneer becomes vivid: “Really, Ronnie? You’re the killer? Acting all alone, I take it?”
“Acting alone. The subsequent killings were just a vigilante smokescreen for the real thing, the Caroon murder and the snatch of the crypto loot.”
“Highly professional, in that case. I commend you again.”
But Bill’s arch look of incredulity hasn’t diminished in the least. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we, Ronnie? Stop beating around the serial-killer bush and address the nitty-gritty in the room. Where’s the crypto wallet private key?”
“In my head. Memorized. I’ll reveal it to you when you let these innocent women go, and I’m able to confirm that they’re safe and clear. Not before.”
Simons stands up. The pleasant-uncle schtick vanished. This is Beyond Bill talking now. He jabs his index finger into Ronnie’s left eye, pushing hard. “Do you not know, Hurtler, that we in Special Crimes can make anyone talk about anything… whenever we want to… motherfucker?”
He pulls out that gouging finger, and Ronnie allows himself to grunt just once. Bill continues: “Are you so out of it, Ronnie-boy, that you’ve never heard of our special Chat Room, over at the waste treatment plant on Founder’s Island? Know why we call it the Chat Room?”
Ronnie forces a grin through the flaming pain in his eyesocket. He may never have use of that eye again. Something’s dribbling down his cheek and he’d prefer not to know what it was. Yet he forces a smile: “The Chat Room would constitute the hard way, Bill. I’m talking about the easy way. Quick and effective, and you get what you want. No fuss. No muss.”
The rage soon subsides in Beyond Bill Simons. Happy-go-lucky Uncle Bill is back.
“What about you two young, er ladies? In my day, Ms. Rodrigues, we never had to call your kind ladies. We had another word for it.”
Veronika says nothing.
Alicia growls out a response, ragged through her bleak 3AM fear: “Don’t matter none what word an old fuck like you has for anything. You don’t count any more, fucker. Your time has passed. You’re the walking dead. Zombie grandad asshole.”
“Maybe so, young woman,” says Bill, smiling pleasantly. “Ms. Alicia Defreitas, is it? Maybe you’re right, hon. Or just maybe there’s a trick or two still left in old fucks like me. Some things are timeless, they say. Will to power, for instance.”
He swivels on his jaunty heels to Ron: “What say you, Mr Hurtler? Shall we go?”
Ronnie’s knees crack again as he’s helped to his feet by the SWAT agents. As he dresses he makes farewell eyebrows to Veronika. Anything more would be dangerous to her. She kneels there in her bathrobe and sucks his physical presence into her memory, just in case.
The gut, the black mullet, the handlebar moustache. Once a brave boy, then a scared cop, now a brave man once more. Her man. Her eyebrow farewell is slight, but he notices anyway.
As he turns to zip up his pants, she sees him let his his wallet drop to the floor. He nudges it under the bed with his foot, almost like it’s an accident.
These finalizing moments, by their very nature, are apt to move very quickly. Arrangements are made in a few words on the phone. People move to their appointed stations by cars escorted with police riders. Movers and shakers are moving and shaking.
Bill made the handoff of his captive to Captain Janine Jason on the tarmac, then slipped back into his ummarked agency car and sped away. Ronnie’s now on board the private plane with his boss, pre-flight checks are already underway. In a few moments, this plane will lift off and they will fly for approximately ten minutes before landing on an island with an airstrip, an island where organic waste is treated above ground and people disposed of far below ground. This is a fabled place, a Beyond Bill black site even more covert than the Chat Room, and very few have ever seen it with their own eyes. Fewer still have ever lived to talk of it. But Ronnie has heard the Captain mention it to the pilots, and they have flight plan clearance for this quick hop.
From the plane, Ronnie will be led away beneath the crust of the earth never to be seen again. Now is all the time he will ever have.
From where he’s cuffed at the back of the plane he can see straight down the aisle to the cockpit where the toupéed head of Maurice Staytrue fiddles and diddles with all the needles and knobs on the dashboard. The plane’s wings whir and shift to the tune of his adjustments. Beside him, his lover Polly Caroon seethes in his ear. She looks angry with pursed lips and spittle flying but she’s playing grabass through his loose trousers all the same. A strange bit of aggressive foreplay to the main event: getting her damn money back off the police detective asshole who cheated them.
Ronnie’s good eye is scanning nonstop, making calculations he can’t make with the rest of his body. The distance from here to there, who’s by what window, this one’s demeanor, this other one’s hand and its proximity to the weapon resting on his hip. Ronnie might be too stupid to understand a crypto blockchain but he knows how to read a room. It’s kept him alive this long.
On the seat across from Ronnie, Captain Justine Jason leers at him with obvious disappointment in her eyes. She has her service piece trained on him and the intent is clear enough. The Captain knows she can’t have her top detective revealed as a serial killer. Once the plane takes off, once Ronnie’s given them the crypto key, that’s it. Ronnie will leave no trace on this earth ever again. He’s not going down for these murders, he’s gonna get disappeared.
“You look like someone lost in the world, Justine,” Ronnie says, eyes never once stilling in their searching and scheming.
The captain scoffs. “Don’t tell me what I look like, Ronnie. Obviously, appearances aren’t all they seem. If you could only see yourself you might think differently.”
Ronnie shrugs. “I don’t look like a cold-blooded killer to you? Maybe it’s that your eyes don’t work the way they used to. Maybe you lost your detective’s instinct when you sold out, skip.”
“You don’t know fuck-all, Ronnie. And I don’t wanna hear shit from a sociopathic monster.”
The engine chugs to life then dulls to a hum. Maurice is making final adjustments. Polly Caroon peers over her shoulder and Ronnie offers her a wink. Beaten and gouged as he is, he’s got nothing to lose with an attempted flirtation. The jet begins to taxi out.
“How much is that divorce costing you, skip?”
Justine’s eyes narrow and she leans in so he can see every line on her face. “You don’t need to call me skipper any more, Mr. Hurtler. You’re retired from service.”
“Listen, I don’t blame you,” Ronnie says. “You’re bankrolled by the mayor, mayor’s bankrolled by all these billionaires who funded his campaign – I get it. You need money, so you sell your morality. Tale as old as dead empires.”
She’s fidgeting in her seat. He’s almost pushed the button.
“But I remember when you stood for something else, Justine. I remember when you loved this city more than you loved being praised by people who wished you were a man. I remember when you were my friend. If I could save your blessed soul, I would, skip. But you sold it long ago. And guess what you get for it?”
He grins. “Nothing. You’re not gonna get a dime of that crypto money. I think I’ll give it all to my girlfriend.”
Her nostrils flare and his face stings before he can register the movement of her hand. The blood flushing to his cheek feels righteous. Justine looks surprised at herself but before either of them can respond, Polly comes tottering down the aisle with a laptop in hand and buckles herself in next to Captain Jason.
Without warning, the plane’s engines spool up to max, and the jet lurches and begins its acceleration down the runway. Ronnie’s eyes don’t leave the Captain’s face. There’s a shame in her cheeks that suggests he managed to tap that old source of rage that used to fuel her toward justice back before all the lines of self and service got blurred. But it’s too late now. They’re surging down the runway and there’s only one destination Ronnie has in mind.
The moment the wheels lift off the tarmac and the plane tips up into the sky, Polly Caroon is forcing her computer into Ron’s lap atop his cuffed hands and giving him an almost indifferent look.
“Put in the key code. Now.”
Ronnie smiles at her. “You don’t even know why your husband put all his money in a crypto wallet, do you, hon?”
“The code, detective.”
Justine looks out the window, watching the clouds approach from above.
“He was getting ready to leave you and didn’t want to chance you getting your hands on any of his money, Polly.”
Polly scowls and kicks him in the shin. “Asshole. The. Code.”
“He didn’t even have a mistress or nothing,” Ronnie says with all his muscles focused on maintaining contact with his remaining good eye. The computer is warm on his hands, warm on the cuffs he is slowly, slowly working to jimmy his way out of.
“He was just sick of you, Polly. My hacker friend, she saw all his secret messages with his lawyers. He was gonna leave you holding a big bucket of nothing ‘cept the flabby buttcheeks of Mr. Staytrue, baby.”
The seatbelt sign dings off and Polly Caroon hurls herself across the gap to point down at the computer. “Put in the code right now, you piece of shit, or else we dump you right in the ocean. It’s a long fall, buddy. Lotta time to regret bad choices…”
Ronnie sighs. It’s good Veronika isn’t here, but he could use her steady hand on his shoulder. He channels the spirit she’s instilled in him. The dark but righteous thing in his blood. Her confidence that he’s not a tool of the system. He’s a tool that helps break the system. Carefully, he removes his cuffed hands from beneath the laptop and types the code and he types it true. An error message chimes its shrill response.
“Uh oh,” he says, grinning sly as a coyote. “It looks like someone’s just changed the… no! The wallet’s been emptied out!”
Polly’s face swells with rage. She tears the computer from his lap and stares in bewilderment at the screen. “You logged into the wrong one,” she snarls.
“Nope. Got changed. Go ahead and check the public key.”
Polly Caroon hesitates, sensing some sort of ruse, but in the end the lure of money wins her over. She graps the laptop and tabs to the public key. Her hand goes to her mouth. A gasp like all the air being sucked out of her vessel, a depressurization of sheer shock.
“What’s up Polly?” Justine asks, curiosity piqued now.
“It’s gone,” Polly breathes. “The money is all gone.”
Jason leans over, her eyes on the screen. “It’s okay… We can trace the public key to wherever it was transferred. The trail’s always transparent in a blockchain transaction, which means – ”
Ronnie hauls off with his cuffed hands clasped together, hoping to knock the pistol from her grasp. He fails, but does get a grip on her right wrist. She twists her arm, brings the gun sharply left and shoots once. Ronnie feels a solid impact in the gut, a raw searing heat and a blunt numbness at once. It spreads at once to his chest and loins, but he’s amazed to find himself still upright.
There are two more shots, going wide, blasting one neat hole in the plastic interior trim of the fuselage and another in the window next to them. The glass spiderwebs with a dry crackling sound, then shatters, the crystal fragments raining out into the night. There’s a roar of windrush whistling. Suddenly a cluster of facemasks drop down from overhead, dangling from their airtubes.
Polly screams and runs forward to the cockpit. Ronnie’s alone in the passenger cabin with Justine Jason, who’s snarling curses made of nothing but consonants as they struggle together over possession of the gun. The plane starts to dive suddenly, which jolts Ronnie up against her face. He butts his head backward and she yelps. He twists the gun in her fist, gasping hard, manages to turn it round on her, and squeezes the trigger.
The bullet enters Jason’s left eye and exits out the back of her head. She slumps forward, releasing her grip on the pistol. Blood, hot and copious, sprays Ron’s hand as he yanks the pistol away from her dead hand and stands clear.
He performs a quick munition count in his head: nine rounds in the mag initially, four or maybe five spent. Night howls past the broken window as the plane starts to level out again at a lower altitude.
Ron’s gut is now scorched with pain, his blood sloshing out over his waistband and pooling on the cabin floor. He slumps down in the puddle of it, nestling the pistol in his cuffed grip. The cockpit door opens and Maurie Staytrue stands in the doorway, holding a large revolver.
He looks around the cabin, sees the body of the city’s former police captain on the seat next to the blasted-out window. Then Staytrue sees Ron where he sits, splayed-out on the cabin floor, and raises his gun.
Ronnie fires until the pistol clicks dry. Three rounds in the center of body mass, one round straying higher towards the neck. Maurice fires once and hits Ronnie in the knee. The agony of Ronnie’s gutshot is abruptly nothing; his shattered kneecap now becomes the focus of all the pain in his universe.
Maurice’s body slumps back into the cockpit and upsets something. The plane dips again and starts hurtling down towards the ocean, the whine of the engines now harsh and urgent outside in the rushing night.
Polly pushes out from behind Staytrue’s corpse. Unthinking, she starts climbing up to where Justine Jason’s body hangs in the seatbelt, screaming all the while in purest rage and panic. The laptop edges off the desk and clunks itself at her. She dodges it and screams again.
Ronnie’s watching her fight her way up the cabin, laughing softly at the absurd effort of it. His gut and his shattered left knee are screaming too, screaming along with Polly’s rage, but he’s done making any more effort at all now. He rests his head on the bleeding deep wool carpet of the cabin floor as the plane takes a steeper angle in toward the ocean and the rushing onset of air outside steps up another octave.
“Hey lady!” he shouts out to Polly. She looks up, her face twisted in agony. It’s not clear if she’s listening. Yes, she is. Despite the panic, despite the pain, she’s fixated on Ronnie’s face and listening intently.
“If you’re still game, I’ll take you up on that fuck you so kindly offered me that time,” he says. “Remember, we were in the hotel, just yards away from your husband’s still-warm corpse? You seemed quite keen then…”
The whine of descent becomes a banshee rush outside the shattered window. Pressed against the seatback, slumped and bleeding out with droplets whipping out towards the rear of the cabin, Ronnie’s ears pop from the sudden recompression of returning so close to sea-level. Only an instant before impact.
Yet he can still scream out: “Too bad it can’t be a three-way with that nice Mister Staytrue. I was slightly bi-curious ‘bout him, despite, you know, the hair...”
They are down, now, all the way down.
And so he never does get to hear her reply.
END OF CHAPTER 11 - parallelogram of forces -
Chapter 12 on Monday December 22 - join us for the FINAL confrontation!
Salute to a lost warrior…
Wagner - “Siegfrieds Tod”
Epic. My reading got interrupted but I got back to it. Couldn’t wait. Wagner at the end—be still my heart.
Ron is a badass.
Lovers are often like castaways on a fragile raft in an ocean of famished sharks. They clasp together, one to the other, as the fibrous bindings that held the palmtree trunks come loose and fray, and rough gunmetal muzzles of the killers begin to nudge their vessel from its course.
Poetry! Right off the bat.