The Winner: Part Twelve

Four days later, I finally get a call from Sergei. "Hey Poopy! We're playing poker over at my place in an hour? It's high stakes. You want to come over?"

I'm at The Palm eating an eighteen ounce ribeye, well done, with a side of garlic mashed potatoes and some corn chowder. "One hour. I'll be there," I reply, then quickly snap my phone shut.

I wave to my waiter and tell him to bring my check and a doggybag. I've only eaten about half the food already feel stuffed. My meal is a hundred and ten dollars. Despite costing so much, the meat still tasted like rubber so I only leave the waiter a fifty cent tip. When I pay that much for a meal, I expect quality.

After getting my Mercedes from the valet, I make a short drive over to my apartment to retrieve the cash I had set aside for Sergei's "bonus". I put the thick envelope filled with five-thousand dollars worth of twenty dollar bills rubber banded together in the inside pocket of my Armani sportcoat, then rush back down to the car.

As I pull into the parking lot of the Lazy-U, some Mexican hooker with tremendously long fake nails starts bugging me. "Hey ese...nice ride. You wanna ride something else nice? I gotta room just over there."

"Fuck off," I mutter. When I worked here, we used to rent rooms to streetwalkers all the time, but we'd never let them hustle pussy right on the property. Things must of gone downhill since I quit working.

Anyway, I go into the office and the same mongoloid day-shift guy I never liked is sitting behind the bulletproof glass reading an issue of US Weekly. I have to bang on the bell to get him to look up from that crap celebrity gossip shit. "Poopy..." he mutters. "What do you want? I thought you were too good for workin' people like us now."

"Just shut the fuck up and get Sergei."

He flips me off, then shuffles his fat ass into the back office and hollers, "That fuckhead Peanutz is here to see you."

Sergei is out of his office real quick. "I tell you how many times? Be polite to customer! Especially Mr. Peanutz if you want to keep your job!"

The day-shifter rolls his eyes, then takes his position back behind the armored glass and resumes reading the latest Paris Hilton gossip. Sergei comes out of the office with a large manila envelope in his hands. "Poopy, I have a DVD player set up in one of the rooms. We watch this there."

As we come out of the office, the Mexican hooker starts harrassing us. "Oh...I see. You two are maricas. I knew you took it in the culo."

"Get out of here before I call police!" Sergei yells, even though with the amount of shit that goes I know goes down here, that's a pretty empty threat. The cops would shut this place down as a public nuisance in no time flat. The Mexican hooker ignores him, and we walk around the corner to a vacant room on the other side of the building.

When we get inside, he makes the door is locked, then pulls the blinds shut. Then he pulls out a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and begins snapping them on.

"What's with those?" I say, suddenly getting nervous.

"Just percaution," Sergei says. He picks up the manila envelope, opens it, and pulls out a DVD-R. "You ever watch CSI? They might find us with DNA."

"Whatever," I say, doubting that anyone can trace DNA just from touching a DVD. Fingerprints, maybe... He puts the disc into the player and I sit down on the bed. "You watch this yet?"

"No," he says. "Not yet. I watch it with you first."

He presses play on the remote. The screen shows a Wendy's parking lot at night. It looks like it's being taped from what looks like the inside of a van. I hear some whispering in a language I assume to be Russian. I figure there is two people in the car: one recording the proceedings and another, presumably the guy whose gonna do the killing.

The frame blurs as the camera suddenly zooms in on the door of the Wendy's. As it comes back into focus, I see that it's following a big burly guy in a leather vest. It's Luke. He's carrying a bag of what I assume are hamburgers. There's the sound of a car door opening.

The camera follows Luke as he heads towards his chopper. He's busy stowing the hamburgers in his saddlebags when a portly looking fellow in a ski mask walks up to him. By the time Luke notices the guy, he's pulled out a huge Tokarev TT and pistolwhips him across his mouth. Luke falls to the ground, stunned, but not too stunned to begin reaching for the Desert Eagle tucked in the back of his jeans. Alas, he isn't able to draw it before the guy in the ski-mask is able to blast two bullets into his knee. Luke is then too pre-occupied with screaming and trying to pick up what looks like his bloody kneecap (which has been blasted off his leg and onto the sidewalk) to be bothered with his gun.

"Ouch," I mutter. Sergei doesn't say anything.

The camera starts moving around too quickly to really make anything out. I hear tires squealing and the side door of the van being slid open. The camera turns around to focus on the back and shows the guy in the ski-mask struggling to shove Luke. "Get the fuck off me motherfucker! You know who I am?"

The ski-masked fellow doesn't care. He responds by slamming the butt of the Tokarev against Luke's face again, shattering his nose which gushes blood all over his chin. Luke is now pliable enough to be thrown in the car easily. The van door slides shut and the camera remains focused on the back, where the now-semi conscious Luke lays bleeding, but there's not enough light to see what's going on very well.

The video cuts to a basement. Luke is sitting in a metal chair with his hands cuffed behind his back. He looks fully conscious now. "If you sons of bitches wanna live, you cocksuckers better let me out of here right the fuck now! When my crew finds out about this, you're gonna wish you never slid out of whore mother's diseased cunt!"

The camera moves in closer and Luke spits blood at it and misses. Another person comes in the corner of the frame and begins slamming his fist in Luke's jaw until he shuts up. When he's finished, Luke is barely conscious again. He mumbles something as a few meth rotted teeth fall out of his lips.

The camera backs up from the unconscious Luke. The second man in the basement picks a brown plastic bottle off a table and unscrews it. He walks up to Luke and carefully pours the bottle's contents on the bullet wound of his destroyed knee. The concotion starts to hiss and bubble. Luke screams back to consciousness, struggling against his handcuffs as what I'm guessing is acid eats away at the meat in his leg.

"OHMYGOD! STOP! PLEASE STOP!" Luke yells. He wretches from the smell of his dissolving flesh, but is soon able to get his breath back. "Dexter sent you...didn't he? I didn't say nothin' to the cops! Fuckin' nothin' I swear! I'm no snitch!"

He gets punched in the face again, breaking open the scabs in his nose which start weeping fresh blood. The the guy goes off camera. I can hear the sounds of him clinking around in the background.

The camera remains focused on Luke. "Look, I still got the stuff from my last load stashed away. The cops didn't get it all.You guys can keep it. Twenty pounds of pure crystal imported from some gook lab in Malayasia. Not that shitty carpet shit. I'll tell you where it is if you let me go. I swear, I won't tell anyone about this. I sw...no. No, please don't. PLEASE DON'T DO THAT!"

The second man comes back into the frame, now carrying a blowtorch. Luke tries to whip his head away, but the man grabs his pony tail and starts running the blue flame over his face. His screaming is inhuman. His skin on his cheek blackens, then blisters, then the blisters crack and weeping pus. He puts the flame onto his scalp and his hair quickly burns away like a flaming bush. Luke finally quits screaming and passes out again.

The scene cuts again, and we are still in the basement, only this time Luke is hanging naked, upside down from meathooks shoved through his Achilles tendons. He is already been bloodied and burned beyond recognition. He hangs there like a man who is already resigned himself to a death that will be likely be neither quick nor painless.

One of the Russians comes back into the picture, this time carrying a bowie knife. He positions himself behind the hanging body in such a way that the camera has a clear view of him as he pulls up on Luke's scrotum and begins sawing away. Luke jerks around as much as he can and gurgles. Upside down as he is, he can't pass out since the blood rushing to his head keeps him conscious. It only takes a few seconds for the Russian to finish cutting and peel Luke's nutsack away from his body like chicken skin. The testicles fall out of the severed scrotum like coins from a small change purse. The Russian walks around Luke's still, but heavily breathing body and the camera pans down to the floor to show him stomping on the testicles, which splat over the concrete like grapes.

"Fuck..." I mutter in shock and awe, my hand reflexively reaching towards my crotch.

After squashing Luke's testicles, the Russian stabs deep into his lower abdomen and slices open his guts. He shoves his hand into the gash and starts pulling out shiny loops of intestine that look disturbingly like sausages. He keeps going like he's pulling out rope. Luke can't do much more than hyperventilate.

The Russian walks off-screen again leaving Luke to dangle from his meat hook with what looks like half of his guts hanging out. There is clinking around off camera. Luke is motionless, but still alive. His body still tries to breathe despite the enormous pain that has been inflicted. I'm torn between feelings of awe about how much the human body tries to struggle in light of such circumstances and just wanting the whole thing to be over.

The Russian comes back on screen, this time holding a gasoline can. He starts dousing it on him and Luke seems to be grunting "n-ohh...nn-oh," but it comes out sounding mushy from his shattered mouth. Once the contents of the can have been upended on him the Russian steps back, lights and entire book of matches and tosses it at Luke while the phosphorous is still flaring.

It bounces off Luke's chest and he doesn't ignite until the matches fall to floor and catch some of gas that has pooled under him. Then he explodes in flame and it takes the camera a moment to adjust for the sudden increase in light. Once the image comes back it shows Luke engulfed in flame, shaking violently as he burns. I can't distinguish the sound of the fire from his screams. He's shaking so much that he tears himself from the meathooks and collapses to the concrete. The camera backs up, but only a little bit since Luke can't stand. His arms and legs beat at the concrete for almost a minute, until I'm sure that the movement are muscle reflexes. The camera zooms in some as the body is burned away to just a charred skeleton, the skull locked in a permenant rictus of pain.
The video mercifully stops there. Sergei turns around to me and asks, "So...you like that?"

The steak and potatoes from the Palm, which had been churning the whole time I watched the video finally rocket up my esophagus and all over the carpet of the motel room. Sergei jumps away before any can splatter on his Nikes.

"Dammit, Poopy...we just had these floors cleaned..."

I ignore him and walk straight to the bathroom and wash my mouth out with tap water. The front of my Armani is peppered with drops of vomit which means I'll have to stop off at the dry cleaner sometime today. I slurp up another handful of tap water, then dry my hand on one of the threadbare towels hanging from the next to the sink.

"So, I take it you like the video..." Sergei says smugly.

"I don't know if 'like' is the word I'd use."

"Still, it what you ask for, yes?"

I work the thick envelope full of money out of my breast pocket and toss it on the bed. "Yep. Your friends definetely earned their money, though I am concerned. Your friends spend an awful lot of time on camera. You sure they can't be identified?"

"I doubt it," Sergei says. "I found the guys through an intermediary who assured me that afterwards they would be going home to Russia for the rest of the year. The names on their visas weren't real anyway. Even if the cops do ask around the Russian community in this city, they won't find out who they are much less be able to trace it back to either of us. Like you said, the guy was a scumbag. Any number of people could want him dead." Sergei picks the DVD out of the tray with his rubber gloved hand and slips it back into the envelope. He's about to hand it over to me when he asks, "You weren't planning on giving this to the police, were you?"

"The thought did cross my mind..."

"Why? There is no body. This is the only evidence of the crime."

"I don't know. Maybe I will, maybe I won't," I say. Originally, I was going to take the DVD and leave it on Apple's doorstep. I figured such a gruesome video might finally snap her sanity. Now, I'm not sure that's the wisest course of action. After all, I don't even think that Apple owns a DVD player.

Sergei hands the envelope over to me tentatively. "Do with it what you will. I doubt the police will be able to do much with this. Just remember, it does get them one step closer to me and you, and my associates will make sure that it ends with you before it ends with us."

"I understand," I say, taking the envelope.

I nearly slip in my puddle of puke as I walk out the door of the room. Walk over to where my Mercedes is parked and notice someone had keyed the paint on the passenger side. It was most likely that Mexican hooker Sergei ran off. I feel too numb to be enraged. When I get home, I make sure all the doors are locked behind me, then strip naked, and sit in the shower for an hour until the water runs cold.

I want to be clean again.