Bio-Justice Read online

  “Give it to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

  Danny drew upon dark impulse and punched the man in his face. It was a sharp, violent blow meant to make any further violence unnecessary.

  “OK, OK,” the man cried.

  The man slipped his hand into his pants pocket and surrendered a single vial of the serum. Danny snatched the vial and pocketed it, walking out of the circular light from the street lamp, and disappeared into the dark.

  Hurrying back to the locked industrial space Pete had introduced to him, Danny checked along the side of the building. Finding some twisted iron mesh screening across a broken window, Danny used all of his strength to distort the mesh further so that it cleared entrance. After that, the window slid open with the help of a smashed open lock and Danny was inside.

  The mattress was where he had left it and Danny lit the candle with his lighter. He scoured the littered floor until he found among the debris what he was seeking. A used syringe had been tossed into the corner and Danny held it up to the candlelight. He wiped the needle vigorously and inserted the vial from his pants pocket. It was only his second time but it already felt like a ritual in which he knew all the steps by heart. He held up the syringe and marveled at the fluid in the vial chamber that looked so delightful against the candle’s flame.

  His delicious anticipation was sharply interrupted. The padded sound of something of considerable weight made itself known. The sound spun his head so by the time Danny was halfway to his feet, the animal had clamped onto the hanging sleeve of his right forearm. Danny screamed as the pit bull growled, the furious motion of its jaws pinched the skin beneath the sleeve, causing him to drop the syringe into the dark shadows. Danny frantically grabbed at a chunk of rubbled concrete and smashed it against the dog repeatedly until it relented and scampered away.

  Danny looked at the torn sleeve. There was fresh blood on it but the wounds weren’t deep. He let himself breathe deeply until his mind snapped back to a few seconds earlier. His hands were empty and he fell to his knees, his eyes frantically searching the floor. Picking up the candle, he followed the natural trajectory of the fallen item and after one fruitless scan after another, his eyes spied the shattered glass vial of the syringe, the fluid now co-mingled on the ground with accumulated filth and concrete dust.

  Danny felt nothing but despair, the crippling kind that ignores danger and sometimes even invites a dance with death. As he sat uselessly on the mattress, Danny heard what seemed to be an endless procession of entrances through the open window, heavy footsteps approaching him that meant him no good at all. After the footsteps stopped, Danny looked up at his circle of doom, the glaring angry faces that would soon be calling for his blood. He almost smiled when he spied the disheveled man he had robbed, who now glared at Danny over the injury that had been inflicted upon him. There was a leader—as there always is—a silver haired brute, Bio-Justiced for sure, who spoke for the group but mostly for himself.

  “Howdy, you piece of rat shit.”

  At first, Danny didn’t recognize the voice but when he saw that high forehead, the thatched eyebrows, the Rondo Hatton profile—there was no doubt. It was Wilson Caine, mass murderer, at your service.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Danny said.

  “Afraid it’s too late for that,” Caine said.

  “Look, I just had my ass kicked recently and I’m still healing. But I can slot you in for next week.”

  Caine spoke, presumably to the shadowy crowd. “Did I ever mention that I hate funny motherfuckers?”

  Danny pointed to the aggrieved party. “Look, I’m sorry about him. I was desperate.”

  Caine was now hitting his stride. “Take a look. We’ve all gone through Bio-Justice. In fact, we call ourselves rats, as in laboratory rats. This exclusive little club of ours also has rules.”

  The rat that Danny had fleeced was giddy with anticipation. He was going to enjoy Danny being smeared across the concrete floor, you could tell.

  “Rule number one,” Caine said. “Never steal from another rat.”

  “Look, I’m kind of new at this. Now that I know the rules…”

  “There is one other little issue,” Caine continued. “The serum you took…belonged to me.”

  “Shit,” Danny sighed under his breath. An idea came to Danny and he threw it out to see if it might stick. “Look, I’ll pay you back for the serum. With interest.”

  Danny felt the crowd creeping closer. “Huge amounts of interest,” he added.

  Caine wasn’t having it. “Too late. It’s time to collect—now.” Without turning his head, Caine hollered out his order to the others. “Grab him!”

  There was a brief scuffle as Danny sent all of his limbs flailing at once, but it was snuffed out quickly. Three of the men grabbed hold of Danny, pinning him against the concrete wall. His chest was pounding with furious heartbeats.

  Caine pulled out a ready syringe, holding it before Danny’s gaze. “Just to show you there’s no hard feelings…this one’s on me.”

  Danny lurched forward but the three men held him fast. One of them yanked open Danny’s sleeve.

  “Let’s make it special,” Caine said. “Sammy—”

  Sammy, some emaciated John Carradine look-alike stepped forward and handed Caine a vial filled with a bubbly brown sludge.

  Caine exchanged vials so Sammy’s special blend was in the syringe. “Battery acid, anti-freeze…and what else is in this cocktail?”

  “A dash of Liquid Plumber,” Sammy giggled.

  “Gives you that extra kick,” Caine said. “OK, hold his arm steady. We want him to enjoy every drop.”

  Danny imagined the worst pain possible and he figured it would be ten times worse than that. He refused to close his eyes, thinking that if this was his last second on earth, then he wanted to see it all—every stinking, horrific, agonizing detail. Among the aged ghosts that peered from the shadows, a silhouette stepped forward into the light pointing a gun at Caine.

  “Let him go.”

  It was Vic Carbona from the halfway house, or a more shabby version of what Danny recalled of Vic. The clothes hanging off his unhealthy frame were probably even worse than the soiled uniforms he wore in prison. Unshaven, with open sores on his face—Vic was a mess, but for Danny he was the improbable miracle he dared not even hope for.

  Caine looked surprised at the .38 caliber revolver pointed at him and he shifted his attention from Danny to the usurper of his spotlight.

  Vic was shaking but the pistol at point blank range wasn’t about to miss Caine. “Danny, things didn’t turn out so hot for either of us.”

  “No disagreement over here,” Danny said.

  Vic was now speaking to Caine directly. “Tell them to let him go.”

  Caine nodded so that the three imprisoners released their grip on Danny. Danny tried to calculate what Caine was thinking and then looked over at Vic too late. A short but solidly built “rat” stomped Vic behind his legs, sending him to his knees. In an instant, Caine pulled Vic’s head forward by the hair and stuck the syringe deep into the back of Vic’s neck. He injected all of the sludge into Vic without pulling out the syringe. Vic’s mouth fell open and his eyes blinked once or twice before he let out an extended scream that silenced the crowd. There was a lurching, violent choking gasp as his lungs filled with blood and finally, the internal hemorrhaging drowned his voice to a pitiful gurgle and he toppled to the ground dead although parts of him still twitched uncontrollably.

  Caine picked up Vic’s .38 off the floor and fired into the lifeless body four times. One of the holes poured blood, another a bubbling caustic fluid. Then Caine swung his arm, pressing the gun against Danny’s forehead. This time, Danny closed his eyes.

  Danny felt the tension of Caine’s finger pulling on the trigger and everything in his body went numb. And then he heard the loud, unmistakable click. And then another. Click! Then two more times—click, click!

 
With Vic, Caine had achieved his orgasm of bloodlust, and now spent, he bowed to his personal superstitions. Caine laughed like someone who had already won, then waited until Danny opened his eyes and said, “You know, I’d buy a lotto ticket today if I were you.”

  Sweeping his arm, Caine signaled for the others to leave. Someone unlocked the front door and the group of rats left, leaving the door wide open, a stark white light pouring in from outside, cutting invasive beams into the shadow world.

  Danny stood over Vic’s body and wept. The raw spectacle of true sacrifice met with real consequence was almost too much for him to bear.

  All the way back, Danny did not feel his feet on the pavement. He seemed to float home, like a disembodied ghost drifting towards its resting place. Block after block, the people around him fell away into shadow figures of no significance, the sounds of the streets adding no coherence to his journey.

  When Danny arrived back at his apartment building, it was morning. He hoped that his female companion from the night before had roused herself out of his apartment so he could fall into bed. Stumbling up the stairs, Danny shuffled past the woman who lived two doors down the hall. The woman was holding her key when she noticed her neighbor, his face bruised, his hair tousled, his clothes torn and filthy. Danny fumbled for his key, sniffling some excess mucus that was rattling in his nose, and then entered his apartment, slamming the door behind him.

  The woman, slender and in her middle fifties with dyed chestnut brown hair, took a few steps down the hall towards Danny’s front door and then stopped, thought the better of it, turned back around and then entered her apartment.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Danny, where the hell are you?”

  It was Louis, leaving the last of five truly irritated sounding voice messages on Danny’s phone. Louis had instructed Danny to pick up a cheap pay-as-you-go cell phone so he could keep communications open with him. He explained that he wanted to be able to leave messages for Danny in case of an emergency or, as Danny suspected, so it wouldn’t be as easy to break an appointment or not show up for work.

  Danny had stayed in bed for two days. Of course, Tom at Henry’s Diner would have been pissed when Danny was out and didn’t call in and now Louis was going to bust his balls.

  There was another message on his cell phone. Kelty was the second harpy that wouldn’t leave him alone. “Mr. Fierro, this is Dr. Kelty at Hodge Memorial Hospital. I would like for you to come down to the office again and take one more blood test. Please call me back as soon as possible.”

  Inside the tiny office in Henry’s Diner, where the receipts were tallied and matched up at the end of the day, Tom forgave and said he would forget, but only after Danny silently accepted the wagging finger in his face and didn’t laugh when he was told how lucky he was to still have his job. The restaurant manager moved back and forth within the confines of the small space as if he were pacing in a bathtub. Tom was showing off his best bluster. “You gonna be out—you call. Are we in sync here?”

  “Sorry, Tom. You’ve got my word.”

  Danny needed to get back on track. He didn’t like all this fawning and apologizing and truthfully, Tom didn’t deserve all the grief. Danny tried to make amends by working hard without complaint and taking fewer breaks. Tom seemed to acknowledge Danny’s effort and came around now and then to crack a joke or two to show there were no hard feelings.

  By now, Danny’s hand had pretty much healed. There was a conspicuous scar on his palm, like he had been crucified, but with the exception of some limitation of movement in his tendons, Danny was able to grab and grip and sort the dishes and glasses that went through his machine with barely any breakage.

  He looked forward to his paychecks and put aside half of his money each period in a savings account so hopefully in a few months he could present Sonya with proof that he was serious about taking care of his son. It was the best plan Danny could conjure up for winning Sonya back, of chipping away at her reserve, of distracting the misgivings in her mind, and circle and ambush his way back to her heart. The savings account balance had exceeded three hundred dollars with this last pay period; surely, Sonya would transcribe these numbers into something that spoke in his favor.

  “Want to take on Tuesday nights?” Tom asked one evening after the restaurant had closed.

  Danny blew cigarette smoke out the back door into the alley. He tugged on his silvery hair. “You want all my nights? Don’t you see this frail old guy you got here?”

  Tom’s round, stubbled face twisted into a smile. “Come on, Danny. This kid I got working Tuesday night, he’s a world champion jerk-off. When he doesn’t come in high, he’s yakking on the phone with his girlfriend—and he’s not even on his break. Dumb little shit moves in slow motion, the dish trays get backed up, I got waitresses complaining they got no plates—” The irony was not lost on Danny that this young jerk-off was probably born around the same time as he was.

  Danny hesitated for a drawn out moment to make it clear to Tom he was doing him a considerable favor. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll take Tuesday.”

  Tom was playing the game too and didn’t want Danny to think he owed him. “Bing,” he said. “Teamwork.”

  Danny let it go. And when he thought about it, Tuesdays would get him to five hundred quicker. And then he would call on Sonya again.

  Margaret Linden descended the two flights to throw out a bag of food waste before it soured the air in her kitchen. She had made a lamb stew a week ago and of the remaining portion Margaret—or Maggie as she was called—was wary of the food’s turning point and so tied it up in a plastic grocery bag to be discarded immediately. Outside, Maggie noticed her neighbor leaning against the iron railing fortressing in the refuse cans, with a lit cigarette in his hand. He took a long drag and scanned up and down the street with a slow, relaxed search. Maggie dropped the bag into the can furthest from her neighbor and found herself hesitating once again. She took a deep breath and decided to speak.

  “Hello,” Maggie said. “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  Danny turned toward the voice and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. He looked at the middle-aged woman dressed in a peasant skirt and beige cashmere sweater and when he didn’t recognize the face, he dismissed her as an aggressive stranger.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know you,” he said politely.

  “I’m your neighbor,” announced Maggie.

  “Do I make too much noise?” Danny asked.

  “No,” Maggie laughed, “we don’t even share walls.” She could read the disinterest in his eyes but felt she had to justify her intrusion. “I saw you the other morning. You looked like you might need some help. I hope you’re all right.”

  “Oh, that,” Danny recalled. “Yeah, I had kind of a crummy night. I’m sorry if I alarmed you.”

  “My name is Maggie Linden,” she said.

  “Danny. Danny Fierro,” he said, as if it were being coerced from him. “Nice to meet you.”

  “If you ever need someone to talk to,” she said.

  Danny wanted to be rude and roll his eyes. Why couldn’t this old dame leave him alone? He just wanted a moment alone to take a smoke and now he was squawking with some grandmother over a night he’d just as soon forget forever. He had to get away. “You know, I have to meet someone. I’m already late. Nice talking to you.”

  Maggie watched Danny disappear down the street. She had liked his face, when it wasn’t scowling. It had a sadness to it that spoke to her heart. But he had looked slightly put out. She wanted to disappear for having humiliated herself again. It was the chance she took when she occasionally rebelled against the prison she built around herself, that cocoon of safety, of dull predictable routine within the slow methodical tumbling of days.

  Danny walked around the block, stopping every now and then to slow down his gait and light another cigarette. He waited until he felt enough time had passed so he would not run into Maggie Linden again, and then returned to his building.

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nbsp; When he was at home, Danny avoided his reflection except when he had to shave. Bad enough that he couldn’t deny the sagging flesh around his waist and the lack of chiseled symmetry his body used to have. But sometimes, confronting that weird apparition staring back at him, he still felt stunned. And it was on those occasions that he thought about taking a walk back down that street, forked away from Hodge Memorial, with the dozens of guys drifting across the pavement who looked as desperate and hollowed out as he was. Luckily, he had moved past the insatiable physical need. After witnessing Vic dying for his sins, Danny lost the craving he had for the serum, although he was still intrigued, by the full moon mystery of it, in the tease of a maddening secret that maybe, in the longest of longshots, would reveal a way back.

  Now he leaned on nicotine to fill in his indefinable gaps, smoking sometimes a pack a night, blowing out plumes at the moon from an open window in his kitchen.

  He watched television most nights, getting in from the diner after ten-thirty. The TV was an old fashioned box model with a twelve inch screen he picked up at the thrift store for twenty-nine bucks. The image was bad and the color washed out but he could see enough. He usually caught the eleven o’clock news and lately there were reports that hinted at an escalation in the processing of sentence-heavy criminals over the past two months. A reporter also told of the alleged overdoses and suicides of Bio-Justice processees, self-inflicted intravenous deaths by a mysterious substance that was spreading like heroin. For the most part, there seemed to be little public sympathy over the deaths of these hardcore “monsters”. “What goes around, comes around,” was uttered so many times by people being interviewed about the overdoses that the media seemed to impose a temporary moratorium on such interviews. Danny even started to watch reruns of Seinfeld at eleven o’clock rather than give audience to the parrot-like litanies of the public at large.