Both men listened as they gazed out through the windshield of the 1978 Lincoln Town Car. Both men heard the screams, but it seemed to disturb neither of them. After a minute, the night became silent. A moment passed, and the man in the driver’s seat spoke.
“I wonder who that guy was.” His voice was thick and deep. He had a heavy inner-city accent.
“Does it matter?” the other snorted. “He’s an enemy of the state.” He chuckled at his own joke, as if he didn’t know who the real enemy of the state was. The man in the driver’s seat either missed the joke or believed it literally, because he laughlessly continued to stare through the windshield. There was nothing to look at save a thick wall of fog. A dim light shone from somewhere above the Lincoln, and it managed to illuminate the patch of cement surrounding the Town Car and the wall of a large rusty shipping crate, neither end of which was visible. In fact, everything a meter beyond the car was so obscured by the fog that it was hard to believe that any of it still existed. If it weren’t for the intermittent screams of agony, the two men might have forgotten where they were.
The driver rubbed his hands for warmth, and blew hot air at his fingers. His fingers were thick and his knuckles were hairy. He rotated them like he was roasting a marshmallow, gingerly aiming for an evenly cooked golden-brown.
“I just wish we could leave the car on,” he said, pausing to blow more air, “and maybe turn the radio on, like we can when we take ‘em somewhere downtown.”
“Are you stupid, Bruce?” the man in the passenger seat said incredulously. “It’s three in the fuckin morning! There ain’t nothin on the radio.”
“Oh. I guess so,” Bruce said plainly. Another scream rang through the air, but it was more faded than the last.
“Hey, Sid,” Bruce pondered aloud to his partner, “We don’t often take them all the way out to the shipyard. You think this one’s special? Maybe he did something real bad, you know?”
“You’ve always got more questions, don’t you?” Sid mocked. Bruce blinked, as if the two hadn’t had fifty identical conversations before.
“Well I dunno. I just thought maybe he…hurt someone. You know, someone important to the boss.” Bruce was a large man, but he always seemed to pick his words with the same caution he might use to pick daises.
“You think you woulda learned by now,” Sid began impatiently. “It’s money. It’s always about the money. Someone gets to owing, and then it’s time for a visit. But we,” Sid forced contact with Bruce’s eyes and engulfed their whole existence in a gesture with his two fingers. “We just have to get them here. There’s no more thinkin than that, mister Albert Einstein.”
Despite the warning, Bruce thought about this for a minute, but his thoughts were interrupted by two men who strode quite suddenly out of the fog and into his bubble of pale yellow light. The first man, who was significantly shorter than his trailing comrade, looked at Sid through the windshield, and gave him a short not. He did not acknowledge Bruce, but instead they turned and strode away, just as calmly as if they were in a park instead of a shipyard.
“Time to go.” Sid looked at Bruce.
Bruce started the car, and promptly turned on the heater.
* * *
“Alright, open the trunk.” Sid’s raspy voice pierced through the alleyway in the late evening. Bruce blinked, leaning against the Lincoln’s side, and then fumbled for the keys in his pocket to do as his partner asked. Sid had suddenly emerged from behind a rusty metal door, and hot air creeped in his wake. He led a man before him with a burlap sack over his head, its drawstrings tight around his neck. The Sackman wore a rumpled gray suit with an unbuttoned white undershirt and no tie. As they drew closer, Bruce noticed that Sackman’s hands were bound behind his back by thin steel wire, which continuously cut into his wrists.
With the trunk open, Sid passed Sackman over to Bruce. Sackman was trembling slightly, and his body jerked when Bruce touched his arm. Sid moved toward the passenger door.
“Watch your head now,” Bruce said as he bent the man over the open trunk. He oriented Sackman so he was lying on his side, and then lifted Sackman’s legs and bent them so his knees touched his chest. Bruce thought Sackman might have been a gymnast or a runner, because his legs seemed very flexible. Either that or Sackman was too weak to struggle. Looking around the trunk, Bruce spotted a sweatshirt. He quickly bunched it up, lifted Sackman’s head, and placed the shirt under it.
“So your head don’t bump so much.” Bruce said. He took one last look at Sackman, who was silent save for his ragged breathing, and then closed the trunk.
Once Bruce was settled in the driver’s seat, Sid passed him a brown paper bag and said, “There’s some food.” It was a cheese danish. Sid had one already in his other hand, and the pair proceeded to eat.
For a few moments, the interior of the Lincoln was quiet. The only sounds Bruce could hear were his own chewing and the occasional wiggle of the car as Sackman attempted to improve his relative level of comfort. Bruce wondered why Sackman didn’t yell or kick, and figured he was probably gagged or too tired. Whenever Sid brought them out they always seemed exhausted. A couple strode past the entrance to their alleyway. They wore trench coats, and Bruce imagined they were returning home after a Saturday night party. Neither happened to notice the Lincoln parked fifteen feet away.
When Bruce finished his danish, he spoke.
“So where are we headed?”
Sid sucked the crumbs from his fingers before replying, “You know that butcher’s shop over by Stevenson’s?”
“Mitch’s Meats?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. We got a guy waiting there for us.”
Midnight Notebook 