They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy Read online

  "We did," she said eventually. "We just didn't want to think about it."

  Die Chaotische Sechs, 'The Chaotic Six' in English, never made it out of London. After weeks of stealing, fucking, drinking and vandalizing our way across most of Europe, Jurgen Chaotischer got high out of his mind one night in Hackney and decided he wanted to 'finish what ze fucking Blitz started' and tear London to the ground. He, Gunter the Wall, Lady Mike and Bill the Dick set to ripping Great Britain a new asshole, and by the time I turned around Tracey had left me there and I had to get out of England by myself. Jurgen and the rest died in downtown London when they tried to take on the British Army and some Post-Humans from by the Metropolitan Police. There were parts of London that had never been rebuilt.

  "I didn't know he was that screwed up," I scowled at Tracey. "I was fucking drunk most of the time, way more than you. And he had all those girls locked up, too, man. I didn't know any of that shit. Did you?"

  "Yeah, you did," she replied, annoyed at me. "We all knew how eff'ed in the head he was, and that he had his thing about young girls. But as long as we got our cut and had fun, we let stuff slide. That's the people you work with. I'm sure there are people at your factory that do shit just as messed up as he did. Bill the Dick was about as fucked up himself, you know that. But as long as they didn't fuck with us, we let them be. You know how it was, come on."

  I didn't know what all that 'we' crap was about, but I didn't argue with her. She had no problem carrying the conversation without me, anyway.

  "After all that, it took a while for me to get myself together, but I've been doing a lot of independent work on my own. People always need things to get places, and I can get things where they need to be without a lot of hassle."

  Tracey used to get us in and out of buildings, cities and countries at the drop of a hat with her teleporting; all she needed was to know what the 'to' and 'from' looked like. Knowing Tracey, she was after the big money, and that wasn't in opening a moving company. She could charge out the ass for moving guns, drugs, money and people across borders with no customs.

  I spent the next forty five minutes down Highway 65 listening to Tracey talk and sometimes breathe to talk more about renovating her house, dieting, her vacations in the Pacific, how I had to go to the Maldives, how she gave up carbs for almost a year, how she gave up meat for almost six months, why she had to switch gyms and she took calls, one from her mother. I tried to act interested in all the crap because I still wanted the option to get in her designer pants, but, Jesus Christ, my dick was being held hostage by her bullshit. Either she had gotten more talkative or I used to drink even more than I thought I had.

  At the Branson Hilton Convention Center, Tracey led me up to the second floor for this weird-ass meeting. I couldn't help but walk behind her again for the view. A placard in front of a small conference room in a corner boasted the Barker Plumbing and Heating Annual Regional Sales Associate Conference with a company logo that looked like a duck taking a dump.

  Her phone rang again. She rolled her eyes and muttered, "I can't even take one fucking day off, I swear to God," to me. "I need to take this. Give me a minute and I'll go in with you."

  She pulled a second cell phone out from her purse. Both the phones buzzed in her hands, and she disappeared into the ladies' room.

  I just hung out next to a fake plant. Two phones, so she must have the client send a picture of where the whatever-the-hell it was to one phone and where it needed to be on the other so she could get both clearly in her head. She probably got five figures for the few seconds of work and made more than a million a year cash doing that while I worked overtime at my station and got raped by taxes and union dues.

  A few minutes later, she came out of the bathroom. "All right, are you ready for this, cowboy?"

  "Is there an open bar?"

  "God. Yes, but go easy on it, please."

  "Don't hold your breath. Hey, after this, you wanna get something to eat?" I almost hoped she said no just so I wouldn't have to listen to her talking any more.

  "Sure," she said without a lot of enthusiasm, then set up her excuse to get out of it with, "I might have to work, though."

  Fuck it. Now I just wanted this trip to be done with.

  We stepped into the beige-colored conference room, and three men dressed better than me around a fake oak table didn't bother to look up from their cell phones.

  "Hey, everybody," Tracey announced. "Look who I found wandering around the airport."

  Chapter 6

  Accomplices

  At the head of the table sat the damn kid calling himself Kamikaze. He wore a black suit and shirt with a lime green tie. The light bounced off of the silver rings in his pierced bottom lip, the stud in his nose and the diamonds up his left ear. He looked up from his phone and nodded at me with a cheesy-ass grin. "Good to see you."

  I ignored him and made my way to the bar set up on a folding table against the wall. A bottle of single-malt Scotch that I couldn't afford on my pay called my name. Tracey took the open seat next to Kamikaze and set her purse down.

  "Hey, man," he said again, a little louder, "Thanks for coming in. How was your flight?"

  He would keep doing his 'polite' way of showing he was in charge and that I needed to acknowledge him until I said something, so I just said, "Everything was fine," and sat down with my red plastic cup of Scotch next to some squirrelly guy staring at an open laptop with programs opening and closing all over the screen even though his hands didn't touch the keyboard.

  I made passing eye contact with a cut black guy at the end of the table wearing a pair of khakis and a black polo shirt tight enough to make sure everyone knew he hit the gym regularly. He jutted his chin out to me in a silent, 'what's up,' and I returned it.

  On the table in front of me and everybody else laid a pad of yellow legal paper, a plain white folder and two black pens.

  Kamikaze tapped the screen on his phone, tucked it back into his suit and knocked his knuckles on the table. "All right. Everybody's good, everybody's got drinks, so I guess everybody's ready to get details on this amazing license to print money, right?"

  Nobody in the room said anything. Douchebag.

  "Shit, quiet room," he fake laughed. "Everybody's too badass to say anything. All right. Well, we're just gonna hit the highlights on this project today and take an early-out so we can all relax and absorb this information and maybe take in some of these fine musical shows that, uh, lots of fat white people seem to like. Anyway, tomorrow, we'll really knuckle-down on this bitch 'til it's black and blue. Cool?"

  Again, nobody said anything. Prick.

  He dug booklets out of a black messenger bag next to his chair and slid one to each of us. "So for today, here's the short version. We're brainstorming ideas for a high-paying, very specialized operation. Now all of you bring your own skill set and experience to the table, and what we're going to do is draw from all of it to come up with deliverable ideas that, in a perfect world, will mean everybody here at this table will get to be a part of the final operation. It may look overwhelming at first, but I promise there is a win scenario out there for us, we just have to find it."

  I downed the rest of my Scotch. I could already feel my mind beginning to wander away from this shit. The motherfucker was probably going to try to sell me a timeshare by the time it was over.

  I opened up the booklet while he talked a lot more. The font was too small, which only made me more pissed than I already was that I had some goddamn homework to read through. The pieces I picked out as I glanced over it, shit like 'hidden Nazi Redoubt,' 'cavernous underground bunker' and 'where science was explored unbound by ethics,' started to give me a headache. Then came the capper of the bullshit parade: 'secretly relocated post-WWII beneath Harper Township, North Dakota.'

  Yeah. A Nazi bunker under North Dakota.

  I hated this shit.

  Kamikaze had kept on running his mouth about how we were here to come up with 'innovative' ideas, and he was
going to be looking for 'out of the box' vision, 'creative power uses' and 'lateral thinking.' I got up and poured myself another fucking drink.

  "So at this point, are there any questions?"

  I splashed a little water in my Scotch. "Yeah, I got one. Did our boy here say he was gonna kill anybody else's family or was it just mine?"

  Tracey set her pen down, annoyed. "Don. Now's not the time."

  "So it was just me, then?" I asked loudly. "That's fucking awesome."

  Kamikaze's put-on laid-back attitude dried up a little. "Hey, it got your ass here, didn't it? I had to make sure you showed. And you're here now, and it will be worth your while. You're gonna be thanking me by the time we're done. I guarantee it. This is an amazing opportunity."

  "Tell you what," I shot back, "Give me a thousand dollars right now, and we're even."

  That put the kid in the hot seat, and if he actually paid me, it would kill his respectability. If he went apeshit on me, it would show he couldn't handle a group like this. He had to come at me just right to come out of it with any kind of dignity. Sometimes it was productive to be a dick.

  The black guy at the other end of the table watched Kamikaze. Tracey threw a "Jesus Christ" my way. Squirrelly guy still never looked up from his laptop.

  The kid just snickered, the piercings in his lips catching the lights again. "I'm not going to give you a thousand dollars, man. Come on. You're all getting paid to be here."

  "Why not? Nobody else got their family threatened. That's not the way to do business where I come from. I'm here because you need me or you want me or whatever. So, you want me here, I want a thousand dollars for that shit on the rooftop or I walk out the door. Don't try to pay me in face jewelry, either."

  The kid's ears began to turn red. "I'm not giving you a thousand dollars."

  I set my drink down. "Then, I'm gone. Later, everybody."

  Tracey threw her pen and bounced it off the table at me. "Goddammit, sit down. You walk out that door, and I'll be up your ass. Grow the hell up and stop mincing around like a butt-hurt little bitch. You don't need a thousand dollars." She turned to Kamikaze. "The whole car ride over here was like this. I'm really sorry. I apologize for him."

  That raised the bar for me. In circles like this, the next step was throwing down the way we threw down; the way that involved property destruction, SWAT teams, newspaper headlines and national days of mourning. And if we did get into it, Tracey always read so much National Geographic that she probably knew eight volcanoes she could send me into right off the top of her damn head.

  So I looked like the asshole punk when I sat back down and gave a bitchy, "This better be fucking good," to try and act like she hadn't just basically teleported my balls into her purse.

  Kamikaze gave the room a moment of silence before he continued, "Now, if Don here will let us all get back to making money--"

  "Hold up," the big black guy said to him, his shoulders square, "I think you need to pay that man for fucking with his family."

  "I didn't do anything to his family," Kamikaze blurted. "He will get paid for being here, are you guys understanding that? I'm being clear, right? Each of you will receive a $5500 consultation fee for being here."

  It didn't sway the guy. "I think it would be professional and make me a helluva lot more comfortable doin' business with y'all if you gave him a bump for what you did. I think he deserves it."

  Tracey slammed her purse on the table. "For Christ's sake!" From her wallet she counted out ten hundreds, folded them up and slapped them on the table in front of me. "There. Can we move the fuck on now?"

  I left the money on the table and crossed my arms with a nod. "All right. I'm good."

  Kamikaze's jaw clenched involuntarily as he muttered, "Fucking unbelievable," under his breath. Little prick. "All right. Our objective is a stealth grab of some merchandise located in the facility that's outlined in your packets. Nothing major: five spiral-bound notebooks and two hard drives. Real exciting stuff."

  "What on 'em?" my new black friend asked.

  The kid folded his hands and looked directly at him. "That's not important."

  "Who're we jacking it from?" I asked.

  "That's in the packet on page twenty-four. We'll be going through that tomorrow after all you guys have had a chance to read it."

  I flipped to page twenty-four. It was titled 'Section 8 - A Brief History of Dr. David Doland.' Didn't recognize the name.

  "When are we scheduled to discuss the pay for the job?" I asked the kid.

  "It'll be merit pay based on what tasks we each get after we've formulated an action plan. As I said, for this consultation, you'll each be paid $5500."

  I nodded. "That square with you, Trace?"

  "I'm here, aren't I?" she said without raising her head from the notes she made on her pad.

  God, I hated these things. No wonder I was drunk all the time in Europe. I took a huge gulp of Scotch.

  The squirrelly guy with the laptop that transcribed every word anybody said while it surfed the Internet, bought stuff on eBay, and played Angry Birds piped up, "H-how fast." Whatever the rest of it was, he mumbled out too much to understand.

  "I'm sorry," Kamikaze said, "one more time, man?"

  Squirrelly Joe got annoyed and angrily repeated, "I said, 'how fast can you fly?'"

  Kamikaze glanced at Tracey. "Me? How fast can I fly? Uh, okay, why?"

  The squirrelly guy, greasy-skinned, bearded and stuck in a body built for celibacy, sighed like somebody in a coffee shop that was just told they were out of goat milk or cinnamon or whatever the fuck it was they put in those drinks. He didn't make eye contact with anything other than the tabletop as he pissed out, "Because your boss's plane is about to have an accident. Yeah, look around at each other like you don't know what I'm talking about, everybody. The guy pulling the-th--he set this all up. The guy you all work for and who's got us all here in this room. Are all of you going to tell me this is for a 'job?' Don't lie to me because I'm not stupid. I know what this is. Your boss wants my nanites, he-he has for years. That's what this whole fucking thing is all about. Not some 'job.' The man has got people watching me, spying on me and coming around my place at night and when I'm not around."

  Oh, it got better.

  "My cameras can't catch them because they're somehow invisible, some kind of light-bending tech that he stole from somebody like me, but don't think I don't know they're there, you assholes. I can see the dust move on the feed, I'm not stupid. I feel them out there every night, watching me, and I'm honing that sense. One day, I'll be burning invisible bodies on my trash pile. I invented nanotechnology in a shack, and he wants to act like I'm stupid. But when the nanites upgrade my eyes, Bill Gates' private army won't be able to hide."

  Tracey rubbed her temples.

  I. Hated. This. Fucking. Shit.

  Kamikaze held up his hand. "Mr. Spencer, nobody here has been watching you."

  Spencer, who had to be that guy Jim Spencer who was on the FBI's Most Wanted list for killing people with machines or something, shook his head and kind of half laughed, half growled. He kept wringing his hands in his lap, except for when he felt like he needed to dig his fingernails into his forearm.

  "Yeah, okay. Okay," he said. "If that's the case, then I guess it's not a problem that your boss's plane is going to crash right now because he's not your boss, right? He's on his way out of the country, isn't he? He's on his sleek private jet on the way to France right now," Spencer pointed up, "Waaaay up in the sky. Above all of us. On his jet that's infested with microscopic nanites from the nav system to the toilet where he shits. And they're all waiting for me to send a signal to down the plane. So I guess we'll see if you're fast enough to fly halfway across the Atlantic and save him, you fucking asshole."

  Kamikaze looked at Tracey like he was searching for some help while everything fell apart in his hands.

  "Jim," Tracey said calmly, holding up the cap to her bottled water in her scarlet-painted fingernails,
"There is no 'boss' here. Do not crash a plane, or I'll shift this cap right into your brainstem. Do you understand me? Calm down. Nobody here is after you." She rolled the bottle cap in her fingers to keep his attention on it. "Do you understand me? Think about it. Bill Gates is just a businessman, okay? He has nothing to do with this. You are off your meds, I know you are. It's pretty damn obvious. Let's settle things down, okay?"

  Tracey pointed at me and my black friend. "You guys go get something to eat. Keep your phones on, we'll let you know when it's time to resume this clusterfuck-in-progress." Her eyes dug into us. "Stay close by."

  Spencer's shoulders shook with anger. His laptop screen read "WHAT THE FUCK SHE'S GOING TO KILL ME" in giant type. Tracey teleported it away to who knew where with a hissing suck of air rushing in to fill the space it left.

  "They're gonna kill me," he said, shaking his head, running his fingers through his slick hair. "Don't leave me here, they're gonna kill me."

  "You're gonna be fine," I told him. "Right, Trace?"

  "Right. We're just going to talk."

  "I'm a dead man."

  Me and the other guy left the room and shut the door. Tracey locked it behind us.

  We cruised the strip and pulled over at Mickey Gilley's place for barbeque. There was a fucking depressing air in the car with us. Three beers apiece and a lot of brisket later, we finally loosened up.

  He introduced himself as 'Stagga Lee' out of St. Louis.

  "The Beast of Fire," I replied. "Ohio."

  "Cool." He didn't act like he had ever heard of me, which was fine by me. He polished off a Heineken and set the empty bottle on the table. "So what'chu think about all this, man?"

  I gnawed a hunk of meat. "I think I would've turned it down like a fucking fat girl the day before prom if the little slanty motherfucker hadn't threatened my people. I got no interest at all in being here."

  "True," Lee nodded, "That was fucked up. But we all here now. Holdin' on to what he did'll just make it worse for everybody. Just get paid now. Keep your mind on that. Just get paid. This your first time with something like this?"