The Winner: Part Twenty-Five

I am now dressed in an expensive gray pin-stripe suit with a cornflower yellow silk tie. It even has a silk hankerchief with my initials embroidered on it. I’m sitting on the edge of the hotel bed with a pillow top mattress, watching CNN on the 42 inch plasma and eating an eight dollar jar of peanuts that I snagged from the mini-bar. Since this room is going on Van Hertzwelder’s tab, I’m planning on emptying the fucking mini-bar, as well as ordering a feast from room service once this stupid interview with the Secret Service is over. A last meal for the condemned if you will.

According to the time on the TV, the Secret Service should be here in about five minutes. CNN goes to commercial and one of those annoying Head-On ads starts blaring so I mute the TV and look over the sheet of instructions that Burke wanted me to memorize. It’s nothing too complex. A fifth grader could recite this crap. If the Secret Service can be fooled by this shit so easily, then I wonder why Burke is so skittish about me meeting them.

Anyway, almost exactly when the time on the television turns to three o’clock I hear a knock on the door. These bastards sure are punctual. I quickly hide the sheet with Burke’s instructions on them under the bed, then walk over and open the door. There is a late twenty-something woman just outside.

“Hello Mr. Peanutz,” she says. “I’m Agent Barrett with the Secret Service, here for the meeting we scheduled with your assistant.”

I try not to look puzzled since up to this point, I didn’t know I had an assistant. I really wish Burke would let me know more about his labyrinth schemes so I won’t look stupid like this. “Of course,” I say. “Come in.”

I let Agent Barrett in and take a long look at her perfect, dew-drop ass as she walks past me and to the desk on the far end of the room. She’s dressed in that conservative, businesswoman garb that looks fucking sexy on the right chick. Agent Barrett is most definitely that chick. My dick starts to harden up for the first time in…fuck, how long? I don’t think I’ve even bothered to jerk off for weeks now since this whole assassination bullshit has been on my head.

I follow Agent Barrett to the desk and sit down across from her, crossing my legs to hide my hard-on and steepling my fingers together, trying to look suave (which shouldn’t be too hard since this is a nice suit and I’m freshly showered).

“How can I help you, little lady?”

Agent Barrett tries to brush off the “little lady” comment and opens her briefcase that has a small laptop in it. “Mr. Peanutz, this interview is the final step we have to take in the process of allowing you security access to the President. Basically, we have been conducting an investigation of you since the President’s Chief of Staff cleared you for the meeting and we just need to verify with you if the information we’ve uncovered is accurate.”

“Ask away, sweetie,” I say.

Agent Barrett ignores me and waits for her laptop to boot up. Unfortunately, she positions it so that the screen blocks my view of her tits. I’m most definitely have a date with some Kleenex as soon as we’re done here.

First, she verifies my full name and Social Security number, date of birth, place of birth; all the typical bullshit. “Mr. Peanutz, do you have any siblings?”

“No. At least none that I’ve met. My mother might have squirted out a couple here and there that she left on a church doorstep somewhere.”

“About your mother, Petunia Peanutz was out of the country recently, is that correct?”

“Yes,” I say. “I sent her to a health resort in Argentina a few months ago. She just got back last week.”

Agent Barrett twists the screen on the laptop (it’s one of those that doubles as a computer pad). On it is a digital picture of an old driver’s license photo of my mother. She looks so much different now than she did in that photo.

“So Mr. Peanutz, this is the photo we have on file of your mother, Petunia Peanutz. Is this picture accurate?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Good old mom.” While the screen is turned around, I take another glance at her breasts. I didn’t know they let Secret Service agents wear blouses that were so low cut…

She quickly turns the screen around, blocking my view once again. She quickly types something into the computer. “Have you been in contact with her since she has returned to the United States?”

“Yeah, I see her every day.”

“Has she mentioned any foreign nationals that may have attempted to contact her while she was abroad?”

“No,” I say. “I mean, just the people at the resort. She had kind of a crappy time there.”

“And it’s true that you don’t know the wherabouts of your father? Your birth certificate does not have your father’s name on it.”

“I never knew my father,” I say. I try to crack a smile. “My mother used to be a prostitute. She always told me the reason she had me is because she could charge extra if she let her johns bareback her.”

“Bareback?”

“Fuck her without a rubber.”

Agent Barrett looks uncomfortable at this revelation. I can see her mind racing for something tactful to say. “That’s…a rather sad thing to hear from one’s mother.”

I shrug. “It could have been worse. At least she blew all that extra money on booze instead of an abortion.” Which might have been better for everyone here if she had, but I cut myself off before I say that last part.

“I’m surprised that you have a relationship with her now, considering your past.”

“Well, I’m trying to get over it. Be forgiving and all. She found Jesus and if he can forgive her, then I can as well.”

Agent Barrett smiles at my insincere little homily. “So to your knowledge, your mother does not have any immediate relatives in countries hostile to the United States?”

“No ma’am,” I say. “The Peanutz are a proud all-American family from Georgia.”

“To your knowledge, is your mother involved in any domestic groups hostile to the United States government?”

“Well, she did say she was supporting Operation Rescue by eating three large Domino’s pizza’s a day for awhile. Does that count?”

“No. In fact, people who supported Operation Rescue in the past are considered great patriots by the government now.”

“Awesome,” I say. “I wouldn’t want that to jeopardize my chances of meeting the President.”

“That would not be an issue,” Agent Barrett says. “The more troublesome thing about your background is that you were released from prison less than a year ago. I need to ask you some questions about your time there if I could…”

“Go ahead,” I say. “I’m an open book.”

She types something quickly into her laptop. “First off, what was the offense that got you sentenced to a year in prison?”

The instructions that Burke left for me were quite specific in that I was not to tell them I was sent there for assaulting a police officer (though I hardly consider accidentally ejaculating a cop’s face “assault”). The Secret Service is extremely suspicious of anyone with even a hint of a violent background having access to the President. Burke’s instructions claimed that their inside man had already changed my file to reflect a different crime.

“Fraud. I’d been stealing credit card numbers from my employer at Subway and using them to finance my sexual addictions. I was also sentenced for adulterating the food there. A few people got sick as a result of what I did.”

“What were your motivations for such an act?” Agent Barrett asks. “Were they political or anti-consumerist in nature?”

I want to blurt out what is political about pissing a jar of pickle slices? But I keep my cool “No. I was just an angry young man; with myself more than with society,” I sigh. “That’s why I’m actually very grateful I was finally arrested and sent to prison. The experience turned me into a better person. I found the Lord Jesus while I was in the prison infirmary. He showed me the way to kindness and forgiveness.”

She types something into her keyboard. “It says here you were critically wounded during the riot at the prison last year. A deal you made with the state was what prompted you to receive reconstructive surgery and secured your early release.”

“That’s correct.”

“I’d like to ask about that tattoo on your cheek.”

My hand instinctively goes up to the skin graft on my jaw, my fingers outlining the scar where the skin was attached. “What about it?”

“We need to know, are you a homosexual?”

“Fuck no!” I blurt out. I take a breath and calm myself down and remember Burke’s instructions. “No, I am not a homosexual. However, I was raped several times by one of the prisoners inside. I have gone through extensive Christian therapy to make sure that the incident did not turn me gay. In fact, it has probably done more to convince me, once and for all, of how it is truly Satan’s hand behind those disgusting practices.”

I smile after I say that because smiling is all I can do to keep myself from laughing at that bullshit I just spouted off. Oh well. Burke’s instructions said to pretend that I was Jesus freak as much as possible, as people of faith tended to have easier access to the President. It would also whitewash my time in prison if I told them I found God while I was on the inside.

“I’m very sorry to have brought that up Mr. Peanutz,” Agent Barrett says coolly. “Unfortunately, we’ve had many homosexuals or members of deviant groups attempt to make contact with the President in an attempt to embarrass him in the eyes of the public, therefore we must be wary.”

“I guess I see your point,” I mumble. “Just know, that I haven’t lived a perfect life, but God has shown me the way. He brought me to rock bottom to humble me when I was in prison. When I got out, he suddenly blessed me with millions in order for me to do His work.”

“I see,” Agent Barrett says. More typing into the laptop. “In regards to your donation to the RNC, according to our records the amount you donated corresponds to the last balance of your account. Why did you decide to donate all your money to the party?”

“Like I said—God blessed me with that money. The money wasn’t mine, it was His. If I do right with it, He will provide.”

Jesus fucking Christ I can’t believe the amount of religious bullshit coming out of my mouth. I wouldn’t fall for this crap in a million years, yet the Secret Service agent just nods and continues typing into her laptop. She seems to be buying it. This country is in serious trouble if people who spout off garbage like I am get access to the government. Maybe Burke is right. Maybe I would be doing the country a favor by blowing this sonofabitch up.

“Okay, Mr. Peanutz,” she says. “May I ask for you to expand on that response?”

“Expand?”

“If you donated all of your money to the party in order to gain an audience with the President, then it must have been for some reason. We must know that reason in advance since it is our agency’s charge not only to protect the physical safety of the President, but to safeguard him from any potentially embarrassing situations as well. So we must know what you plan to speak with the President about?”

“I don’t know. I just want to meet the man. Give him my thanks in how he’s protecting the nation from terrorists.”

Agent Barrett looks unconvinced. Then I remember what Burke’s instructions said to say if I was asked this question. “Oh, and I also want to see if I can have his support in the privatization of more prisons. I think that all the problems I saw with violence and homosexuality during my time in prison could be easily solved if those institutions were changed to a faith-based, for-profit model.”

“Ahh, I see…” she says, then types some more into her laptop. “We’ll have the President’s staff collect some policy papers that he can review regarding the subject before the game. I will also have to ask that during your conversation with the President that your subject not stray from what you have just told me.”

“So I can’t talk to him about golf or the weather or stuff like that?”

“You may make small talk with the President. In fact we encourage it as a way of creating camaraderie. However, if you are planning on using your meeting with the President as a way of engaging in a political argument, you will be immediately escorted away and your file will be red flagged. And I must warn you, most people with a red flagged Secret Service file end up on all sorts of other nasty things like No-Fly lists as well.”

“Geez,” I say. “I guess those liberals must really be sneaky when it comes to embarrassing a great man like President Bush.”

“We’ve only had one or two problems of this type during his entire term in office, but we must remain vigilant.”

Then she continues typing a whole string of stuff into her laptop for a good minute. When she finishes, she turns it off and places it back into her bag.

“Since this is your first time meeting with the President, I will give you an idea of our protocol. Your game with the President will take place at the Southland’s Country Club next Wednesday from between one o’clock and three o’clock and no longer. We tell you this only so you can review the course and must ask that you inform no one else of the location of the game in the meantime. This is a private game between you, the President, and four other people who made similarly large donations to the RNC for this particular fundraiser.”

“Got it,” I say. “I won’t tell a soul.”

“A car will arrive at the residence we have on file at twelve fifteen sharp. It will be driven by a Secret Service agent and will return you to your residence after the game is over. When you arrive at the country club, you will have a chance to change in a locker room we will have secured. You and your clubs will be subject to another search before the security detail escorts you to the green for your game with the President. There will be refreshments available during the game, as well as alcoholic ones. However, we must ask that you do not become visibly inebriated during the game. You will be subject to removal if that happens.

“This is a private game, so we do not anticipate any media at the event beyond the usual press corp that covers the President’s comings and goings. They will be kept away from the event, so feel free to speak as candidly as you with about the subject you gave us. Remember though that there are four other donors also at the event, so try not to monopolize all of the President’s time. His assistants will facilitate the time you spend with him. We also ask that you do not share any snippets of conversation you may catch from the other donors with any members of the press.”

“I can’t imagine why I would want to,” I say.

Agent Barrett smiles and then rises from her chair. “I know it all sounds very structured, but we try to make the experience as enjoyable as we can,” She hands me a business card. “If you have any questions between now and then, you can contact us at that number and we can clarify things. Oh, and also report to us anyone suspicious who may try and contact you before your meeting with the President, no matter how innocuous it may seem. I repeat, do not tell anyone of the exact location between now and then.”

“No problem,” I say to her tits.

She packs up her laptop and tries not to look visibly uncomfortable while I leer at her. I follow her to the door and open it for her. I have a strong urge to slap her on the ass as she passes by, but since she’s a Secret Service agent, she’s probably got a gun so I don’t.

I go back and sit on the bed. I wonder if Burke is going to call me now that this is over to tell me I’m free to leave. I lay back and go over the meeting again in my head, only this time, after Agent Barrett interviews me, I punish her anally with a monsterous dildo while she gags on my cock. It takes me a depressingly short time to blow my load, especially since I wanted to savor my first jerk-off in a while. I must be pretty backed up since a heavy stream of my man chowder shoots out of my dick. It splatters all the way up to my shirt. Fuck. I’m gonna have to clean up before I leave her to make sure I’m not covered in come when I leave.

Before I do that though, I just stare at the sticky, pearly goo on my hands. Swimming around in that are tens of thousands of little Poopies that will never be. I’ve never been big on the idea of procreation. In fact, little children disgust me and I’ve always thought it was cruel to bring another human being into this foul, fucked up planet of ours. However, staring at my semen running over my fist like a glove, I slowly begin to wish there was a little me running around some place. Something that would take my place after I die, which looks imminent. For the first time in a long time, I start to cry. And not just tear up a little. I start to bawl like a faggot who just lost his favorite buttplug.

After I’ve cried enough tears to make two wet spots where my eyes are on the bed’s comforter, I realize the cellphone is ringing. Burke’s cellphone. I fumble around and pick it up with my left hand since that was the one that didn’t have my come rapidly drying to it.

“Hello, Poopy.”

It’s Burke. “I’m at the hotel. I just finished talking to the Secret Service agent. I told them everything you wanted me to tell them. What the fuck do you want?”

“I know that. I heard and saw everything you said in the room?” he says. “By the way, did you have a ‘good cry’?”

I should have known that fucker would have the room bugged. I start shaking with incoherent rage.

“I just called to tell you that you performed to our expectations. Keep playing it cool and you will get the stripper’s children back, mostly intact.”

“How do I even know they’re still alive dammit?” I scream. “For all I know they’ve been dead this whole time.”

“Where would we have gotten the arm then?”

“Maybe you cut it off after they were already dead. Or maybe you took it off some baby in a dumpster. I don’t know, but since they’re the only reason I’m going through with all your bullshit, I need to know they’re still alive.”

“Don’t get all righteous, Mr. Peanutz. I highly doubt the children are your main concern. I would put it second to the months, no, years of torture you yourself will go through unless you do exactly what we say.” Burke sighs. “However, I will grant your request. We will provide you with a proof-of-life by this evening.”

“You don’t need to provide it to me,” I say. “I don’t even know what these kids look like. I’ve seen them all of once and all snotty little sprogs look the same to me. I need Apple to get that proof of life so she can verify that it’s really them.”

“You would be putting her in danger to let her know too much.”

“She’s already in danger and she already knows her kids have been kidnapped. She doesn’t know anything about the assassination because she doesn’t have to. Think about it, that would probably be the last thing she’d come up with as a motive. She still thinks I’m still rich and just won’t pay you guys the ransom.”

“That can be done,” Burke says. “Your cellphone is equipped to receive video so we’ll stream you live video of the children. Then, will you be satisfied?”

“Yes,” I say. “And when you do it, you might want to do whatever you can to cover up the way you disfigured one of them already. Apple isn’t exactly in great shape right now.”

“We will soften the impact as best as we can. Tomorrow afternoon, when you’re ready, redial the number I called you on and let it ring. We’ll set up the video stream then,” Burke says. “In the meantime, keep playing it cool. We’re in the home stretch now Poopy and too many important people have invested too much into this action for anything to go sideways now.”

“Very well then, I’ll call you tomorrow fucker.”

“Oh and Poopy, you can keep the suit, so you might want to get the semen dry cleaned off of it at your first opportunity.”

I’m about to yell at the phone again but he hangs up. I’m so angry I nearly chuck it at the muted TV. On it, is a picture of George W. Bush stumbling his way through a press conference. How ironic. I stop myself since I’m gonna need the phone tomorrow. I need to keep my rage in check if I’m gonna make my way through this. Fuck it. I’m not gonna stay in this room where they can watch me any more. Besides I need to go see my mother so I can change her bandages…

Then, it hits me. A crystal moment of clarity. Then I start laughing. It was so obvious, I didn’t even realize it. This isn’t over, not by a long shot. I’m not a dead man walking.

I suddenly have a plan on how I can get out of this whole mess and fuck Burke, Van Hertzwelder, and all their neo-conservative buddies for good.

But first, I’m gonna need to see my mother…

The Winner: Part Twenty-Four

“Poooopy,” Apple is cooing from the bedroom. “Pooopy. Where are youuu?”

I’m in my trashheap of a living room trying to get some sleep. I’ve cleared out a space amongst the garbage where I can lay out a blanket and use one of the shredded up couch cushions as pillow. A fucking homeless squatter lives better than I do.

“Poopy…it’s time. Are you there, Poopy?”

Yes I’m here. I’ve been listening to her call for me for the last hour or so. The heroin must be wearing off, again. It sucks how quickly she’s developed a tolerance for the stuff. When I started, one shot would keep her knocked out for the whole day. Now, I have to inject her with twice as much to get her half as knocked out and I have to do it every six hours or else she starts going into withdrawal.

“Please…please someone help me here! Poopy! Anyone! I need help! My bones are cold!”

Dammit. I get up and gingerly step through the heaps on the floor, trying my best not to impale my foot on a splinter like I’ve been doing almost daily. I only have enough heroin to last for the rest of the week at the rate I’m giving it to her. She starts begging after about five hours. At six, she’s screaming and I have to give it to her or else she’ll wake up the neighbors.

When I appear in the doorway, she gasps. “Oh thank god! Where have you been?”

“I had to go out for a bit,” I say. “You know I’ve got things I have to do.”

Apple gives me a relieved smile as I come up to the bed, exposing a mouth filled with yellow, broken teeth. I replaced the sheets I used to tie her hands to the bedposts with plastic zipties I got from the hardware store. I should probably replace them with new ones since her wrists are chafed, rubbed raw through the skin. White pus dribbles down her arm from where it collects in sores around her wrists.

“So, are you gonna give me my shot now?” Apple asks anxiously. “Please, I need it. I’m getting really cold here. I could really use a shot.”

“Hold your horses,” I say, as I pull out the needle and get to work. The smell in here is atrocious. Apple has been pissing in the bed since, of course, I can’t risk taking her to the bathroom to do her business. I got a bedpan from a medical supply store to take care of this, I’ve just been too distracted to let her use it on a regular basis. Thankfully, heroin makes you constipated, so I haven’t had to deal with too much shit.

Probably the other reason I’ve been avoiding using the bedpan too much is that Apple is getting some serious bedsores from being tied down to the bed for weeks, and I’d have to lift her up to scoot the pan under her. The festering smell of infection and rot in this room would choke me up if I wasn’t so used to it.

Anyway, I cook her up a huge shot of heroin, then I kneel by the end of the bed and inject it in the web of skin between her big and middle toe. I can’t risk moving her, but the least I can do is rotate the places where I inject her so she doesn’t get too many track marks. I’ve already flubbed up injecting her enough to leave dark veins showing through the skin of both of her arms.

I push the plunger home and a couple seconds later, Apple gasps as it hits her bloodstream.

“Is that better?” I ask, pulling the needle carefully from her foot.

“It’s perrrrfect,” she says, melting into the bed. “It feels like heaven.”

I look at the rotted state she’s in. Apple looks emaciated and must have dropped fifteen pounds off her already very skinny frame. Not that I’ve been trying to starve her, but the only food she seems able to keep down is cold chicken broth.

If this feels like heaven, then I’d hate to know what hell is like. Thank god I don’t believe in that religious voodoo.

I ask Apple, “Is there anything else you need?” but she’s already too far gone in a heroin daze to even respond. I put the needle and the heroin away, stash it back under the bed and leave the room. I can’t stand to be in here for too long. The whole scene looks like some serious, serial killer shit is going down. I guess it’s appropriate since I’m going to be the man who murders the president.

I feel sorry for Apple. I wish I could let her go and I wish I could afford to pay for the rehab clinic she’s going to eventually need to go to, as well as years worth of therapy. But I have to keep telling myself, this is the best thing for her. If I wasn’t doing this, Apple would probably be running around, asking questions, and likely be killed by Van Hertzwelder. This all looks cruel, but I’m doing it so that eventually she can be reunited with her children, maimed though one of them may be.

There’s a buzzing noise somewhere in living room. It’s coming from my pants, which are laying in a heap in the little nest I’ve cleared out. It’s the phone Burke left for me. I put it onto silent alarm. I must have not heard it for awhile, since there’s a text message on it saying simply: ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE PEANUTZ.

I click the SEND button and grunt, “What?”

“Why haven’t you answered your phone?” the voice on the other end is electronically masked, but I can still tell from the clipped, wanting-so-hard-to-be-white diction that it’s Burke.

“I slept through it.”

A disappointed sigh on the other end. “It is important that you answer your phone whenever we page you. Especially today since we have something for you to do.”

“Well, quit whining and spit it out, jigaboo.”

Another sigh on the other end. “Peanutz, I realize you’re under a great deal of stress because of our arrangement, and not inclined to like me whatever my race may be. But if you refer to me as a jigaboo, nigger, spearchucker, jungle bunny, or any offensive slang term for an African-American again—even colored—I’ll have another arm cut off of one of Apple’s poor, helpless children,” Burke says. “Do you understand me you fucking whitebread, peckerwood, honky piece of shit?”

“How do I know they’re even still alive?” I ask. “You can’t even shake a baby without killing it. Chopping off their arm has got to be even worse.”

“It was done surgically,” Burke says. “The baby was unconscious the whole time. We did it to the younger of the two, figuring he would have more time to adjust his new disability, therefore making it slightly less traumatic. After all, we are not complete sociopaths.”

I guess I’ll have to take his word for it. “Okay, then what do you want me to do now, you fucking queer.”

Burke growls on the other end. “Be careful, you’re treading a fine line Poopy. I need you to go to the Brown Palace downtown, room 413. The room is in your name, so just present your ID to the desk to get a keycard for the room. You have to be there in an hour…”

“I can’t be there in an hour,” I say. “I have to go see my mother in an hour. I have to change her bandages.” Well, I didn’t have to be there in exactly an hour, I just had to go over to the motel and help her change them once a day. Thankfully, the inflammation along her sutures was going down, and she says she will only have to do it for a few more days. Compared to the monster I’ve been slathering up in medical jelly for the past week, I have to say she is starting to look normal again. Or at least, not nearly as disgusting as she had been. Good, after paying a quarter of a million dollars in surgery, she better have not come out looking like Frankenstein.

“Seeing as we’ll kill her if you don’t do as we say, in a sense you are helping her.”

I could continue to protest and be a pain in the ass, but we both know that in the end, I’m gonna do exactly what he says. “Continue.”

“The Secret Service advance team needs to do a face to face interview with you before you can meet the president. We chose that hotel because, frankly, your apartment is a wreck and will throw up a huge red flag for them should they see it. There will also be a change of clothes and some time to take a shower before they come. Please take one since you tend to smell pretty bad from what I gather.”

“Fuck you, nig…” I catch myself. “…fucker.”

Burke chuckles. “There will also be instructions for exactly what to say to the Secret Service agent who will come to interview you. Do not deviate from them for any reason. We have gone through great trouble to clean up your record enough so that the Secret Service would even consider letting you within twenty feet of the President. If you spook them in any way, or god forbid, try to tip the agent off to the plot, we will know even faster than when you tried that stunt with the FBI. Remember, we have a highly placed mole in the Service.”

“So you keep telling me. Is there anything else?”

“No. That’s all for now,” Burke says. “Cheer up. This will all be over about a week. You can take comfort in knowing you will die one of the most notorious men of the twenty-first century. Some misguided communist types may even consider you a hero.”

“Fuck you,” I hang up the phone, drop it on the ground and then start screaming at it. “YOU FUCKING NIGGER! FUCK YOU AND FUCK THAT NAZI FUCK VAN HERTZWELDER AND HIS FAGGOT KID TOO!”

I punch the wall, but I’m such a pussy I barely dent the plaster and just scrape all the skin off my knuckles. I scream, “FUUUCK!” for about a minute, holding my bleeding hand. Once I get it out of my system, I pull some pants on and head downtown towards the hotel.

The Winner: Part Twenty-Three

Five days later, I’m sitting in some uncomfortable plastic chairs across from the duty-free stores at the airport. According to the arrivals monitor, her flight landed forty minutes ago, but there’s still no sign of her anywhere. I unenthusiastically pick through a copy of Penthouse I bought at the newsstand, just to pass the time. The goatee guy is standing across the concourse, acting like he’s reading a copy of Harper’s. Why does he even act like he isn’t following me? He might as well just handcuff himself to my arm, it’ll make it easier. I’ve seen this motherfucker every place I go. He knows it, I know it. His presence annoys me more now than it scares me.

Of course, my presence at the airport probably isn’t raising any red flags with them. It wouldn’t be too hard to find out today is the day my mother is returning home. Besides the money I was ordered to donate, I haven’t bought any plane tickets, withdrawn any large sums of cash, or even spent anything besides renting a minivan for a couple days so I can drive my mother home from the airport.

After I recovered from the shock of seeing that dismembered baby arm (and threw the damn thing in a dumpster several blocks away from my house while wearing gloves to make sure my fingerprints were nowhere near this thing since they’re on file with the state) I found a liquor store, bought a bottle of whiskey and went home. I’m not much of a drinker, but I did three shots in a row before my gag reflex started working. I don’t know how alcoholics can guzzle this stuff like water. I followed the instructions on the piece of paper the fake FBI agent gave me (or perhaps he was a real one who was yet another mole for Van Hertzwelder’s conspiracy) and wrote a check out for half a million dollars to the Republican Party, along with a letter that coyly insinuated that I’d like to meet the President when he came to town in the next few weeks for a round of golf. I’ve never even played golf in my life. Not only will I die, I will die looking like a douchebag.

So now I’m back to square one. No, more like I’m back to square negative one. Or maybe negative one-hundred; I doubt the malaise I feel can even be expressed mathematically. Three months ago, I had more money than I could even dream of earning in a lifetime of working the shitty, dead end jobs I always seem to end up in. Not only am I going to die, I’m going to die broke. A loser. A nothing. Over the past few days, I’ve tried not to think about it. I try to keep myself wrapped up in my routine: eat, sleep, shoot Apple up with more heroin to keep her quiet, maybe go for a walk, eat some more even though nothing tastes good anymore.

In the last few days or so, I mulled over what Burke told me in the limosine a few weeks ago. That I’m a piece of shit and this is my one chance to make a mark on the world. There could be worse fates than dying and taking the life of one of the most hated presidents in American history with me. I started to take perverse joy in my impending notoriety. My entire life would be picked apart, psycho-analyzed. Every place I’ve gone, every person I’ve known would be considered a piece of a puzzle to conventions full of conspiracy nutjobs for decades to come. Kids would learn about me in school. They would have to those annoying interview assignments where they go to their parents and ask them, “Where were you when you first heard that Poopy Peanutz blew up George W. Bush?” I’m seriously thinking of trying to write a “manifesto” in my last few weeks on this Earth, knowing that my words will be dissected for a long time after I’m gone.

Of course, my ego is always brought back down when I realize that I won’t be around to enjoy my notoriety. I guess if I believed in some sort of afterlife, it might seem less cold. But since even with my end coming near I still can’t bring myself to believe in any of that religious bullshit, any pleasure I can take from the aftermath of the assassination just rings false. I try to make my peace with the inevitable, but I can’t.

Maybe I should start using my middle name. It seems like all proper president killers should have three names…

A porter walks up to me and asks, “Are you Mr. Peanutz?”

I’m zoning out on all my thoughts, so he has to ask twice before I snap out of my funk. “Yeah, that’s me. Mr. Poopy Patrick Peanutz. I’m him. Yesseree…”

He looks at me weird since I’m acting weird. He motions his arm behind him. “Your mother has just cleared the concourse. She’s ready for you.”

“Okay, thanks,” I say. I roll up the Penthouse, stick it in my back pocket and follow the porter over to where my mom is waiting.

“Poopy,” my mother whispers in a dazed voice. “It’s so good to see you again.”

At first, I wonder if this is supposed to be some sort of joke. The thing sitting in that wheelchair looks more like a mummy than my mother. In fact, I wouldn’t have even thought it was my mother if I hadn’t recognized her voice. She is wrapped up in a layer after layer of gauze, with just small holes for her eyes, nose, and mouth. Some clear, yellowish substance is weeping through the layers of bandages like she’s sweating Vaseline. She has the crisp odor of institutional cleaning products all over her, the kind they use to overpower nasty things just underneath. Fuck a mummy, she looks like a goddamn third degree burn victim. Mummy, burn victim, whatever; at least she looks about two hundred fifty pounds lighter than she used to be.

Slowly and weakly, she raises her arms up towards me. The bandages around armpits make a cringe inducing slurping sound as she moves them. “Here my dear Poopy, give me a hug…”

“Hi mom,” I reply nervously. There’s no fucking way I’m giving her hug, so I give her a pat on the shoulder, and even that is pretty unpleasant since it feels unnaturally squishy underneath and my hand comes away with a film of…something on it. I wipe my palm off on my slacks, then pull out my wallet and hand the porter a twenty. He thanks me and scurries off, then I feel like a schmuck for giving him so much since for the first time in months, I’m on a budget.

I push her wheelchair out to the baggage claim. Since it has been so long since the plane unloaded, her one bag was one of the few still circling around the metal ramps. I snatched it away from some wetback airport employee who was about to stick it in the unclaimed section before the load from the next airplane was about to start rolling off the conveyor belts.

“Here we go,” I drop the bag on my mother’s lap (she let’s out a surprised grunt), then I grab the handles and start pushing her out to the short term lot. I’ve been parked there an hour and it costs about twenty bucks every fifteen minutes, and I don’t want to have to shell out for another fifteen minutes. Christ, I’m becoming a cheap bastard again.

But despite being a cheap bastard, I would have given the valet another twenty bucks if he would have come out here with us and put my mother into the rented van. The squishyness of her skin just under the gauze, combined with the medicine smell of her body was unnerving, especially since I had to get her arm over my shoulders to lift her up with her bandaged tits barely inches from my face.

I guess I should put this in perspective. This isn’t nearly as bad as sticking my arm up another man’s ass. And also, even though it isn’t pleasant to lift my mom into the car, it is easy. Before her trip, lifting my mom into anything would likely fuck up my back for life. Now, she weighs about as much as Apple does. Good, because I’d be severely pissed if the hundreds of thousands of dollars I spent for her to go to that overpriced fat camp only shaved off thirty pounds.

Once she’s inside, I fold up the wheelchair and stick it in the back and toss the bag in afterward. “Poopy,” she moans. “Before we go, can I have a pill? I’m starting to feel itchy again, and the doctor says if I scratch myself, I’ll pop my sutures.”

I grab her bag again and unzip it. There’s several different bottles of pills inside, as well as other containers and another huge roll of gauze. “Which pills do you want?”

“The ones with the yellow top. I can take those in the day time.”

After prying open the child-proof cap, I put on her hand. She looks at me expectantly. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“No.”

“I need something to drink if I’m gonna take my pill.”

I zip the bag back up. “I’m not walking all the way back to the terminal just to buy you a Coke to wash it down with. Either dry swallow it or wait until I get you home.”

“You’re mean,” my mom pouts. I get into the van and fire it up and start driving towards the parking lot’s main gate. My mom starts to make some hocking noises, like she’s trying to summon up enough saliva to swallow her pill. I look in the rear view mirror and am disgusted to see drool running down her chin as she pops the pill into her mouth and makes an overstated gulping noise.

“Oh God, Poopy. That was so hard. I hope I don’t choke to death just because you couldn’t get me something to drink.”

I groan. “Mom, if you were choking right now you couldn’t whine about how you were choking. Now shut up.”

When I get to the window, I search around for the ticket I took from the machine when I came in. I can’t find it anywhere, even after turning my pockets inside and out. I look through the entire glove compartment twice before the car behind me starts honking his horn. I end up having to pay the Mexican booth attendant fifty dollars for a “lost ticket fee” before they’ll lift the gate to let me out. Fuck. I think of all the things I could have used that money for.

I try not to think of how in a just a week, I won’t need any money.

My mom makes small choking and gagging noises on the entire drive into the city. She isn’t really choking, she’s just trying to make me feel guilty. I drive her down to the shitty part of town, where the Lucky U Motel is. Sergei is gonna let my mom stay here and out of my hair while I try to figure things out. Besides, it’s probably not a good idea to have my mom around while I had Apple tied to my bed and shot up with a bunch of heroin. Sergei was eager to do it, trying to curry favor with me anticipating more high money favors from me. I’m sure if he knew I was pretty much broke now, he’d probably tell me fuck off.

I park in the lot next to a pickup truck that’s more rust than metal. “Poopy. Where are we?” my mom mutters.

“Um, you’re gonna stay here for awhile. Don’t worry. I know the owner. He made sure to give you a room that doesn’t face the freeway.”

“But Poopy, I thought you said you bought a house? I thought I was gonna stay there with you.”

“It’s not a house. It’s a loft. Besides, you can’t stay there. I…I hired some fag interior designer to fix up the place. I having the whole place renovated. There’s shit everywhere. You don’t want to stay there.”

I open up the side panel, pull out the wheelchair and then proceed to lift my mom out of the car. It’s not quite so bad once you get used to doing it I guess. I have to push her down to the end of the row of rooms to get to the handicapped ramp. Her room is on the first level, just next to the Pepsi machine that has been broken for as long as I’ve known of the place. I get the key Sergei gave me and open up her door.

“I don’t see why you can’t get me a room at the Marriott,” my mom grumbles. “Or maybe even the Brown Palace. It isn’t like you can’t afford it.”

“No, this is better,” I say, wedging the door open with my hip until I can pull the chair inside. “This is closer to where I’m staying, so I’ll be able to see you regularly and you’ll have your own space.”

“I bet you’re staying someplace nice…”

“Well, if you don’t like it, feel free to check out and find some other place for yourself.”

“But I cannnn’t,” my mother whines. “I’m still in recovery and you’re the one with all the money. Can’t you get me a credit card or anything?”

I’m half tempted to just blurt out to her that I’m broke because I’m being extorted by a conspiracy to kill the president and that the quality of her fucking hotel room ought to be the least of her concerns. But telling her might get her killed. Then again, if she keeps this up, that might not be such a bad thing.

Once she’s completely into the room, I go back to the van and get her bag. She’s still sitting the middle of the room when I get there, gagging and choking again after a brief respite to whine about where she’s staying.

“Poopy, please can I have some water now? I’m dying…”

I drop the bag on the bed, grab one of the Styrofoam cups off the counter and go into the bathroom to fill it in the sink. I notice a used condom dried to the edge of the toilet and peel it off, tossing it into the bowl and flushing it. Thankfully, I caught that in time before my mom saw that. I’d never hear the end of it if she did. I think about washing my hands afterwards. Instead, I stick my fingers in the cup of water, hoping at least a few particles of dead dry sperm, or bacteria, or germs float off and make it down my mother’s throat. It would serve that bitch right.

After letting my fingers steep in the water for about fifteen seconds, I wipe my hand off on my pants, go back into the bedroom and hand it to her. “Here you go, mom.”

She takes the cup and doesn’t even say thank you. She gulps down the water, crumples up the cup and drops it on the floor. “Thank God,” she gasps. “I think I’ll be okay now. A little longer and I would have passed out.”

I roll my eyes. “Good then. Well, here’s forty bucks. The number for Pizza Hut is on the ad on the cover of the phone book. I’ll call you in a couple days to see how things are going. Later…”

“Poopy,” my mom calls out before I can reach the door. “Don’t go yet. I need your help.”

I slowly take my hand off the doorknob and say through gritted teeth, “Only if it’s quick, mom. I have places I need to be.” I didn’t really; I just didn’t want to hang out with my mom any more than I had to.

“I need your help changing my bandages. The doctor says I need to change them twice a day for the next week or I’ll get an infection.”

Fuck. If I still had any money left, I’d just hire a nurse to do this for her. I guess the task is now on me once again. “Fine, as long as it doesn’t take too long.”

My mom slowly gets up out of her wheelchair. She’s as wobbly as a doe that’s just been squirted outta momma deer’s cunt. She starts pulling at the metal clasps that are holding the bandages shut. She hands a few of them to me. “Don’t lose those.”

The bandages make a sickening slurping sound as she peels them off. She lets them drop in a heap on the floor. Underneath, she’s naked. My mom no longer looks like a mummy, she looks like fuckin’ Frankenstein. There are purple scars where her excess skin was cut away and sutured together. Even with the skin tightened, it still looks unnatural. I don’t know if it’s the weird jelly she’s been packed in, or just the fact that her skin has been stretched out for years, but her whole body has this weird, shiny sheen about it.

She does look thin though. Thinner than she’s looked in, well, since I’ve ever known her. Hell, if it weren’t for all the scars and the unnatural skin, she might even be hot. She looks like a beast that’s been stitched together from the chopped up parts of dead supermodels. If anything, that makes this experience all the more worse.

“Poopy,” she says, pointing at her bag on the bed. “Get the jar of medicated Vaseline out of there. I need to put a fresh layer on my stitches so they don’t get inflamed.

I get the jar and hand it to her. She twists off the cap and scoops out a big handful. She starts slathering it all over her shoulders, arms, tits, and stomach. She hands the slimed jar over to me. “Can you rub this all over my back and legs? I can’t quite bend down very easily…”

I shudder. I take a finger dab and start rubbing it into the flesh of her thigh.

“No, no. You have to use more. You have to cover all my skin or else it will dry up.”

Dammit, I can’t half ass this. I take a big scoop of this nasty smelling goo and knead it into my mom’s thigh and buttocks. This is worse than fist-fucking that faggot back at Alley Cat’s when you factor in the extreme Oedipal shit going on here.

I rub some of shit into small of my mom’s back and accidentally tear open a small blister of skin next to one of her stitches. A small bit of pus squirts on my mouth and I jump backwards, spitting it out on the carpet and wiping my whole face with the back of my arm.

“Come on Poopy,” my mom says. “It’s not that bad.”

“Jesus Fucking Christ mom! This is in the top ten nastiest things I’ve had to do in my life!”

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, praise be.”

“Not with the Jesus shit again!” I groan. “I thought the people at the spa convinced you that that stuff is all bullshit.”

“Oh no, Poopy,” she says. “Yes, they tried their best to strip me of my faith. They locked me in rooms and gave me drugs trying to get me to renounce the name of my Lord. They said that unless I gave up such superstition, I would never be able to be truly thin, in body as well as soul.”

“Whatever,” I say, going over to the sink and drinking some water right out of the tap to wash the pus taste out of my mouth. “It sounds all creepy and culty, but it’s essentially right.”

“No it isn’t,” my mom says calmly. “The counselors there did their best to convince me there was nothing but this world. I even had to renounce the name of my Lord in front of everyone to end their torments. But it just made my faith in God stronger. I learned that speaking the name of the Lord is one thing, but keeping him alive in our heart is another. If anything, it made my faith in God stronger. More real. That was probably more important than the transformation of my body. The experience, the tribulation, the thing it transformed the most was my heart.”

I shrug. “Well, whatever. I paid for you to get thin and I guess they did that, so I’ll mark satisfied on the comment card.”

My mom looks at me and shakes her head. “Poopy, I really wish I could show you what I know. That there’s something beyond this world, something larger than all of us.”

“Mom, I’m not getting into a religious discussion with you,” I bark. “You know how I feel and I’m not changing my mind just because you think some asshole with a beard lives in the sky.”

I wipe my mouth one more time, hoping that I’ve got all the pus out of there. “Okay, you’re covered in goo. Can I go now?”

“Well, the part I really need help with is putting my bandages back on. Otherwise, I’ll dry out and I can’t do that until I get full blood circulation back to my skin.”

“Once I put the bandages back on, can I leave?”

“Oh, and I can’t eat Pizza Hut. I have a very specific diet of greens, kale, and sea weed I need to consume every few hours to stay healthy. After you spent so much to make me thin, I can’t go back to my old ways.”

This just keeps getting better and better. “I’ll find some vegetarian restaurant you can order that crap from.”

“It’s not crap,” my mom protests. “You just have to train yourself to believe that vitamins are yummy.”

“Did Jesus tell you that?”

“Don’t blaspheme, Poopy.”

It takes another fifteen minutes to get my mom wrapped up in fresh bandages and looking like a mummy again. After I’m done, I deliberately neglect giving my mom a kiss goodbye on the cheek and take the sodden, pus and goo covered bandages out to the dumpster behind the motel. The dumpster smells like a dog crawled in there and died. I toss the bandages in there and back away. If there was one sense I wish I was without, it would be my sense of smell.

As I walk back to the van, Sergei dashes out of the office. “Hey, Mr. Poopy! How it hanging G-loc?”

“What was that Sergei?” I say, annoyed. “I don’t speak nigger.”

“Hey, my uncle wanted me to ask you; have you heard from Hirsch lately? He has some business associates that have a case he needs to look into.”

Hirsch is probably chopped up and buried deep in a landfill somewhere, but of course I can’t tell Sergei that, so I just say. “I haven’t heard from him in a week. He was supposed to call me about my case. If you hear from him, tell him I need to talk to him.”

“Versa vice, Mr. Peanutz,” Sergei says. “Why you driving this soccer mom piece of shit, Poopy? Where’s your Mercedes?”

“It’s in the shop,” I say. “I’m getting some work done on it.”

“Terrific,” Sergei says. “Hey, I have a friend that can get you some neon-trim on it, as well as a spoiler. He can do it cheap, only a few thousand. You interested?”

“No Sergei,” I say. “Besides, who the fuck would put a spoiler on a Mercedes S-Class?”

“I would,” he says instantly. “You know; ‘Fast and Furious’…”

“Right…” I say. “It’s been nice talking with you. I but I gotta run.”

“Cool homey,” Sergei says. “Don’t you worry about your momma. I take good care of her, like she was my own momma. Don’t worry about a thing!”

I think snidely, if she was your mother, you wouldn’t be some Rusky who thinks it’s cool speaking Ebonics. You’d be a fucked up piece of shit like me.

I wonder if I should warn Sergei to get out of town. Go back to whatever cold, gray Russian town he hails from. After all, he has helped my ass quite a bit. I’m sure if this whole assassination plot goes down the way Burke and Van Hertzwelder want it to, Sergei is gonna get snapped up and sent to Guantanamo Bay where he’ll never be heard from again. But he’s already asking questions about Hirsch. Telling him to get out of town will make him even more suspicious. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find some way of warning him.

I drive the van back to my apartment. I have it rented out for the next two weeks. I don’t imagine I’ll be alive after that.

The Winner: Part Twenty-Two

I run furiously, avoiding the sidewalks and streets and taking the alleys whenever I can. I want to put as much distance as I can between myself and the sodomite bathhouse that my beloved Alley Cats has become. If I’m going to lose Burke’s men, it is going to have to be now.

So I run and run until my lungs feel like over-inflated balloons and I’m dripping sweat. I have to stop for a moment to catch my breath and am depressed by the fact that I’ve only made it four blocks from the porn store. Fuck, I’m so out of shape. I’m also horrified to find that I’ve neglected to remove the gimp-mask those leather-fags made me wear. Way to keep a low profile, Poopy. Way to go…

I yank the leather mask off my face, the crisp spring air feeling extremely cold on my sweaty face. I toss it into a nearby dumpster, then do my best to wipe the slime of blood, shit, and Crisco off my arm with a dry old newspaper. Once I’ve gotten enough of that crap off me that it didn’t look like my arm was absolutely covered in gore, I grab my 32 karat gold Rolex out of my pocket and look at the time. I’ve got twenty-five minutes to make it Sixth avenue.

Still winded, I get onto the sidewalk and start walking at a normal pace (which was really all I could do at this point), figuring I’d stand out more if I were running. I still would have to hump it. Sixth Avenue was pretty long ways to make it on foot in the time I had. I could try and take a taxi, but didn’t want to get off the side streets onto the major roads to try and hail a cab. Looking around, I didn’t see the goatee man or the black car or really sense anyone following me. I didn’t want to risk them picking up my trail again what I had to do to lose them.

So I keep walking towards Sixth. When I look behind periodically to see if I’m being followed, I see a bus ambling up in the direction I’m heading. I hustle up to the stop at the end of the block, winding myself again. The bus pulls up just as I get there, waving my hands around for it to stop.

The doors open up and I’m digging through my pockets for change for the fare when the bus driver stops me.

“Hold on, buddy. We’ve got some handicapped people we’ve got to let off first.”

I roll my eyes and jump back onto the sidewalk. The bus driver starts operating the hydraulic lift that lowers wheelchairs down to the curb. Some cripple with a disease that twisted his body into all sorts of inhuman positions pilots his wheelchair over to the ramp with his claw of a hand and joystick. It takes him two minutes just to get his wheelchair in position on the lift. Then another minute to lower it to the ground. Once cripple boy has finally made his way off onto the sidewalk, I start up the steps to the bus. The bus driver holds out his hand once more.

“Wait, we got one more rider we’ve got to unload.”

“What the fuck?” I yell. “I have places I gotta be, goddammit.”

“You and everybody else, buddy. Just stand back. This will only take a moment.”

Of course, it took longer than a moment. This was a female cripple this time. She must have had the same disease as the guy before her, but it took her even longer to use her joystick to get her wheelchair in position.

Finally, I explode: “Look bitch. Would you please hurry it up? Normal people here have someplace more important to go to than a fucking sponge bath.”

Her numb face doesn’t even register my comment. The other cripple bumps me from behind with his wheelchair.

“L-l-leave her alone. Th-that’s my wife, j-j-j-jerk.”

Great, these people are breeding now. I’m furious, I grab him by his chair and look straight in his lopsided face. “Or else what motherfucker? What are you gonna do? Roll over my foot? I’ll say what I want to whomever I want to. Got it?”

The cripple backs his chair up and starts stammer at me. “Y-y-you’re a p-p-p-prick. And you sm-smell like sh-sh-sh-it.”

“Whatever. At least I don’t need a ramp to get into my house, dickhead.”

After what feels like an eternity, the cripple’s wife finally rolls off the hydraulic ramp. The second she rolls off, I try to get on the bus, but the driver snaps the doors shut on me.

“Get the hell off my bus,” the driver sneers. “Catch the next one you prejudiced asshole.”

“No! I have to take this one! You’re required by law to give me a ride! This is discrimination!”

“Bullshit. Get out of here your prick.”

The doors start tightening on my chest and finally I have to pull back. The bus starts immediately rolling forward. From behind the windows, I hear the other passengers start cheering the driver and flipping me the bird. Scumbags. This must be what Rosa Parks felt back when the niggers started getting uppity about their rights.

I turn around to continue walking when the cripple cuts me off with his chair, the wheel running over my foot with the broken toe. I bolt of pain tears through my leg and I fall to the ground.

He stutters at me, “F-f-fucker…” before he and his cripple wife start rolling down the sidewalk at top speed. Not that I could catch up to them with my foot in this much pain. Besides, I had more important things to do than kick the shit out of some handicapped people. When I can finally stand on it again, I continue on down the street towards Sixth Avenue. I had only ten minutes to get to my meeting with the FBI. I limp along as best as I can.

Of course, I don’t make it to the Wilshire Apartments on Sixth in ten minutes. By the time I was able to limp the entire way there, I was about twenty minutes late and fucking exhausted. Fuck it. Twenty minutes is well within the realm of fashionably late. I just hope the FBI thinks that way too.

They must, since when I get around the back there to the area with the loading dock, I see a non-descript gray van parked there by itself. I head towards it cautiously. When I’m within twenty feet, the panel side slides open and there’s a man wearing a sharp gray suit and an earpiece.

“Are you Poopy Peanutz?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I say, hobbling over to them. “Sorry I’m late, but you wouldn’t believe the shit I had to do just to get here.”

“Tell us about it in the van,” he says, waving me forward. “Our time window is slipping and we don’t want to compromise our position.”

As soon as I jump into the van, the driver (whose wearing blue coveralls) starts up the van and starts backing out of the space. The inside looks like what I’d assume is surveillance van from what I’ve seen in the movies. There’s a bench with a laptop bolted down as well as several TV monitors. Besides the agent in the gray suit, there’s another agent sitting down with his coat off and his sleeves rolled up.

“Have a seat right there. There’s no seatbelts, so hold on using that bar right there.” I do as he says. “I’m Agent Allen, this is Agent Smith. We’re both with the Bureau’s Corruption and Ethics squad.”

“Pleased to meet you guys,” I say. Between these two agents and the two I met at the police station, it feels like I’ve met half the FBI in the past couple of days.

The van peels out of the lot of the apartment building and I can feel it heading down the street, though the windows in the van are non-existent so I don’t know where we’re going. Agent Allen leans forward, “So, Mr. Peanutz, we heard through our liason in Organized Crime that you need desperately to talk to us. We’re talking with you because you claim to have information on Carl Van Hertzwelder that may be of use. Do you mind if we record this conversation?”

“No, go ahead,” I say. Even though I don’t like the idea of having my words recorded, I figured consenting would make me look like less of a crackpot. “Look, it boils down to this: Carl Van Hertzwelder is involved in a plot to kill the President of the United States.”

Agent Allen looks over to Agent Smith, but says nothing. “That’s a fairly serious allegation you’re making Mr. Peanutz. To be quite honest, the Bureau thought that this probably had something to do with you having gay sex with him in a bathroom somewhere, or some sort of blackmail.”

“Fuck you,” I say. “I’m not a fag.”

“The information in your file would seem to say otherwise Mr. Peanutz. For one, we do know that you were cellmates with Van Hertzwelder’s son when you were doing a year up in Canon City. Second of all, while it can’t be proven in a court of law, you were also cellmates with Armando Herrera. Very close cellmates we heard. It looks like you were being passed around quite a bit in there.”

“Fuck that! I was the pitcher, not the catcher! You haven’t had to go for a year without busting a nut. I did what I had to do while I was inside, but I haven’t fucked any guys since I’ve been outside. I’m straight, and I’ve got references.”

“Very well,” Agent Allen scribbles something onto his PDA. “So do you have any evidence of this alleged plot that Mr. Van Hertzwelder is involved in to kill the President?”

“Yes. I was forced to meet with him a week ago. He was there with two other people and they told me all about their assassination plot!”

“Do you have any other evidence besides your own personal testimony that this exists?”

I think for a moment. “I guess I don’t. Wait! Yes! There’s was a kidnapping! This stripper got her children kidnapped. That was how they got me to meet with them!”

“Yes,” Agent Allen says. “When we pulled up your file, we did notice that your name came up in the investigation of a kidnapping of the children of one Angela Clements. Why didn’t you mention all this to Agent D’Anci and Johnson when you met with them?”

“I was afraid the interrogation room was bugged. Or maybe that they were double agents or something. Van Hertzwelder told me not to tell anyone or they’d kill me and Apple’s children. I figured I’d be much safer telling the FBI through back channels. From what they were telling me, this conspiracy goes into the highest levels of government.”

“I see,” Agent Allen says. He scribbles some more stuff into his PDA. “Why would a high level government conspiracy tell you about their plot to assassinate the president, if one did in fact exist?”

This fucker obviously doesn’t believe me, but I tell them anyway. I tell them about how Van Hertzwelder blamed me for the death of his son and that they were blackmailing me into killing the president as a way to stage a coup in American politics. I told them about Burke and how the entire military-industrial complex was involved in this.

“Very well,” Agent Allen says. “You do realize how completely ridiculous all this sounds and that it is a federal crime to threaten the life of a sitting president?”

“No shit, Sherlock. Look, I don’t want to kill the president and I’m taking some serious risks in order to tell you this shit. I’m being followed by men in black cars constantly. Like I said before, you don’t want to know what I had to do to throw off their surveillance just to meet with you guys! Fucking hell! I could get killed for giving you guys this heads up!”

“Calm down, Mr. Peanutz,” Agent Allen says. “We’re not saying we don’t believe you or that we’re not taking you seriously. It’s just that we need to make this sound believable for our bosses. Listen, I’m gonna call them right now and see what we can make of this information.”

Agent Allen pulls out his cell phone and starts talking discreetly into it. I look out the front of the van and see we’re pulling up to my apartment building. I bound out of my seat up to the driver and yell at him, “Get out of here! The conspiracy has people watching my apartment twenty-four seven! If they see me here talking to you guys, we’re fucked! Keep on driving you stupid son-of-a-bitch!”

I feel a hand yank me back into my seat by the collar, followed by the unmistakable cock of pistol. I turn my head to protest when I see the barrel of a silencer Agent Smith is holding just inches away from my eye.

“Everything is fine here, Mr. Peanutz. Please, calm down,” Agent Allen says. He speaks into the cell phone again, then hands it over to me. “I have someone here who would like to speak with you.”

I carefully take the cell phone from Agent Allen. I put it up to my ear and hear a familiar voice.

“Do you know who this is?”

“This is Burke, right?”

“Correct.”

“Mr. Peanutz, you’ve not been following our instructions,” Burke says. “We told you not to tell anyone about our little arrangement or else there would be serious consequences.”

My eyes dart between the two agents and silenced pistol being aimed at my head. “Well, since these guys work for you, I technically haven’t told anyone else about your plot. So I haven’t really told anyone else.”

“Yes, that is technically correct,” Burke says. “In fact, the reason you’re not dying in an inimaginably painful way right now is that you’ve not leaked our secret in any way that isn’t one-hundred percent containable.”

“Okay, so no harm no foul. You have my word, I won’t do it again.”

Burke laughs. “Mr. Peanutz, we both know that your word isn’t worth the breath you used to give it to me. No, we need to teach you a lesson that will hammer home how serious we are.”

My eyes dart between the two “agents” in the van with me. “You really don’t need to teach me any lessons. I double-dog swear I won’t tell anyone about you guys again!”

“No, you do need to be taught a lesson. We’ve been onto your half-assed plan to inform the authorities since almost before you even thought about it. If we wanted to nip this in the bud, we could have done it days ago. However, we figured it would be useful to let you think you were getting away with something for a brief time, if only to bring to light two points…”

“Can’t you just tell me those two points? You don’t need to, um, ‘hammer them home’ so to speak.”

“Mr. Peanutz, calm down. These men will not be inflicting any physical harm,” Burke says, then adds: “On you at least.”

“Agent” Allen leans over and turns on the laptop, types a few things and a photo-slide show pops up. The first one is a grainy one of the inside of my apartment. Allen cycles through various freeze frames of me destroying the place, looking for this camera that, from the angle the photos seem to be coming from, the tract-lighting above right next to the loft; an area that was out of convenient reach for me to check.

“First of all, Peanutz, don’t bother trying to find them again now that you know roughly where they are. My men have gone inside your apartment during this time you’ve been trying to evade our surveillance and removed the devices. We didn’t learn much from anyway. We found the cameras are more amusing than informative.

Apple… “But, what about…”

“Don’t worry, we did not disturb the drugged out stripper you have tied to your bed. In fact, we’re quite pleased that you did that. You plugged a potential hole that we didn’t have to.”

Agent Allen clicked to advance to the next picture. This one was a picture of Hirsch, tied to a chair. He looks angry and is yelling at the camera. Men dressed in black gloves are behind him.

“That Jew lawyer you hired was a great help to us. We picked him up within a day of when he contacted the FBI trying to find someone to talk to you. Of all the people you talked to, he knew the most. He was also the most helpful in telling us about your plans. We didn’t even have to torture him to get him to talk. He gave you up only on the promise of quick and clean death…”

Allen clicks forward to another picture of Hirsch, this time he’s slumped in the chair with a flower of blood on his shirt right over his heart.

“We are nothing,” Burke says. “If not men of our word.”

Allen clicks forward again, this time to a picture of two men in suits hung by their neck in some wearhouse. They have signs on them in hastily scrawled Spanish. It takes me a second to recognize them. It’s Agent D’anci and Agent Johnson, the two FBI guys who interrogated me back at the police station.

“We made their deaths look like retaliation from a Salvadorian gang they are—I mean, were—investigating. They didn’t know much of anything. Thanks to us, they never will know anything.”

Click forward. The next picture is one of the two cops that arrested me in the park that night getting into their cruiser. “We haven’t done anything about these two yet. Tonight, they’re going to get a call for a domestic violence dispute. Something will go wrong and they will both end up dead during this call. These two cops likely don’t know a damn thing, but we’ve got to close up any loose ends that might arise. Cops sometimes have a tendency to get nosy,” Burke clears his throat. “I don’t need to remind you that there will be torture involved should you try to warn these two cops of their fate.”

“That’s cool,” I say. “I’m not all that big of a fan of the police to begin with.”

“Good to see you’re becoming a team player, Mr. Peanutz,” Burke says. “That’s the end of our slide show. The second point I’d like to make is that I hope it’s clear that even if you were to slip past us and speak to the authorities behind our back, your story is completely nonsensical. In fact, our plan was designed that way. If you tell the police, they are more likely to throw you in the loony bin than the will able to stop us. We’ve got moles in the FBI, CIA, NSA, and every other alphabet suit government agency you can think of. They are all experts of information containment. You’re pleas will not get very far. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good,” Burke says. Agent Allen hands me a slip of paper. “In the meantime, you will cut a check to the organization on that piece of paper for a half-million dollars. For a donation of that size, you will be invited to play a game of golf with the president, as well as donors who have given similar sized gifts. That will be where you will murder the president. Further instructions will be forthcoming, just be sure to send that check tonight.”

“A half-million dollars?” I say. “I’m not sure I even have a half-million dollars left in my account thanks to you assholes.”

“We’ve noted that you seem to have problems keeping track of your money. You have exactly five-hundred two-thousand seventeen dollars and sixty-two cents in your account Mr. Peanutz. After cutting that check, you will have more than enough left over to pay for groceries and basic, incidental needs for the next two weeks. However, you won’t have enough to do anything stupid like flee the country or hire any more lawyers or mobsters to do your dirty work.”

Considering the shit I’m now, the last thing I should be worried about is my fortune. But still, the thought of having to use it to seal my own doom raises a sliver of defiance in me. “What if I don’t do like you say and just fly out of the country tonight motherfucker? I’m sure a half-million bucks could last me a long time in some third world beaner shithole.”

Burke sighs. “You know what will happen. We have ample resources to kill both the president and you anyway. And before you die, you will also have the deaths of everyone you love and the stripper’s two children to boot.” He clears his throat, then adds, “I thought we already went through this.”

I’m still angry though. My back is against the wall and my instinct here is to fight. “How do I even know you even have those kids, asshole? For all I know, they’ve been in a daycare this whole time.”

“Well, if you really need convincing. Allen, show him the last picture.”

Allen clicks forward. The screen shows a photo of two babies bawling in a crib with masked men over them. One of the men is holding up a newspaper. The date on the paper is from two days ago.

“I don’t see why you think we’d be bluffing on such a matter, but there’s your proof that we really are holding Ms. Clement’s offspring.”

The picture of the two babies kind of deflates whatever defiance I have in me. I mutter into the phone, “I’ll have the check in the mail tonight.”

“Very good. Just follow the instructions on that piece of paper and nothing else will happen to them.”

“’Else’? What do mean ‘else’?”

“Mr. Peanutz, though dealing with your recent insubordination has been trying this past week, I must say, I do admire your guts in trying to do something. You obviously have some big, swinging balls on you; that’s not in dispute. But what I really want to know now is, how big is your dick?”

What the fuck is he talking about. I start to get snotty again, “Why does that have to do with anything you nigger faggot?”

“Just humor me…how big is it?”

“It’s the size of a baby’s arm holding and apple. What. Is. The. Point?”

Burke laughs. “Well, you’ll see. Now get the fuck out of the van and go home, like a good little boy.”

I’m about to unleash a flood of curses on him, but the phone cuts out immediately and Agent Allen and Smith simultaneously grab my shoulders, slide the panel door of the van open and toss me onto the asphalt on my back, the impact winding me. The van starts driving off and I just barely get my leg out from under its tires before I get crushed.

I stay laying on the street until the van turns the corner. Then I lay there for another minute until I can get up again. I’m exhausted. It is the exhaustion that comes from struggling fruitlessly against fate. I wallow in it, since that seems to be the only thing I can do with my fate.

When I can’t stand it anymore, I finally pick myself back up and begin limping towards my apartment building. I hear a car pull up on the street behind me. I turn around and see the black car that’s been tailing me, right back in position. I swear I can see goatee guy in the passenger seat through the tinted windows. I’m pretty sure he’s smiling at me. I flip him off, then turn around and go inside.

After digging around forever for the keys to my building, I finally just follow two of my neighbors in. They look at me even more distastefully than usual. I probably look even more hellish than I usually do, with chunks of grit from the street sticking in the back of my neck. The three of us ride silently on the elevator. I get off on my floor before they do.

As I walk down the hall towards the door to my loft, I notice there is a box laying in front of the door. It looks like it could have been left by the mailman, but there is a note on top, the letters cut and pasted from newspapers like a ransom note in a movie.

POOPY…OPEN ME.

I pick up the small cardboard box and feel the weight shift around in it. It’s sealed with masking tape. I unlock my door, then skip around the rubble of my apartment and put the box on the island countertop. I take one of my kitchen knives, made of heat-tempered Japanese steel, quickly slice through the tape and open up the cardboard flap.

I recoil in disgust and shock, leaping backwards and banging the back of my head against the shelves of my cupboards (I’d removed all the doors in my search for surveillance devices). The knife falls from my hands and sticks tip first into the linoleum of the kitchen floor. I’d been on the verge of it all day, but finally I have to throw up.

Inside the box is the severed baby arm. It looked like it was in the first stages of decomposition, with the veins turning purple through the rapidly graying skin. The cut looked clean and not jagged though, as if it was done with a jigsaw.

But the big fuck you was what it was holding in its hand, the tension of the tendons being kept in place with what looked like construction staples…

A big, red, Washington apple.