PICTURES OF YOU
by Keith Rawson & Chad Eagleton
She was stretched naked across the sweet damp bed. The burning ember of her cigarette the only light in the midnight dark as he spoke:
“So what do you think, baby?” His voice seemed disembodied and coming from a far corner of the room even though he was laying only a couple of feet away. She took a drag and found his face in the brief flash of red.
“You mean about what we just did?” She asked turning her face toward him and giggling under her breath. “I feel pretty good about that.
“Heh . . . Yeah, that wasn’t too bad . . .”
“I’ve never seen you like that—it must’ve been all the electrical tape.”
The man couldn’t help but smile to himself; it was all the electrical tape, but not for the reasons she thought. He’d finally discovered an effective way to shut her up short of killing her.
“It was a good time, baby. But I meant what we were using the tape for originally . . . Do you think he’ll go for it?”
She took a long draw off her smoke, the glowing tip making her youthful face look demonic and dipped in flames. “I couldn’t say why he wouldn’t,” she said. “He won’t want to see me hurt.”
He nodded. “I’ll send Cavanaugh tomorrow”
* * *
It wasn’t his lawyer’s normal day; not that Purcell minded, getting to see his lawyer was one of the only times he had some semblance of privacy. The two C.O.’s who’d escorted him from his cell stopped him at the entrance of interview room #6, unlatched his leg shackles and handcuffs and opened the door. He expected to see the slumping form of old man Donovan; instead he came face-to-face with a complete stranger.
“You’re not my lawyer,” he said, after the guards shut the door.
“No, Mr. Purcell, I’m not. Why don’t you have a seat?”
Purcell sat down. The man who wasn’t his lawyer handed him a pack of cigarettes, his brand, and a book of matches. He tapped a filter-less Camel out, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, lit up, and slapped the deck down on top of the table, never taking his eyes off the guy who wasn’t his lawyer.
His lawyer, Trevor Donovan, was an old, idealistic, hippy P.D. with thinning gray hair coaxed into a limp ponytail. When he smiled—which was often—he gave you an eyeful of his ill-fitting dentures that shifted around a little whenever he talked, or laughed, or breathed. His wardrobe consisted of checkered sports coats and slacks in colors only old men bought.
Purcell liked Donovan and looked forward to his visits.
But this guy?
This guy who wasn’t his lawyer? Purcell could tell just by looking at him, looking at his unremarkable, over-jelled dark brown hair, looking at his orthodontist sculpted smile, and looking at his ten thousand dollar Italian silk suit that he wasn’t going to like this guy.
This guy was a douche bag.
And Purcell hated douche bags.
The douche bag who wasn’t his lawyer pushed back from the scared brown table, reached down between his legs, and gently placed a briefcase that cost more than the guards outside earned in a year at the center of the table.
“Now Mr. Purcell,” he said, popping open the briefcase, “there’s something I’m about to show you that may upset you. But I want you to understand that I need you to remain calm once you’ve seen it. And it’s very important that you don’t attack me or yell for a guard once you’ve seen what it is I have to show you.”
The douche bag reached inside his briefcase and came out holding a square black and white card and a shiny metallic fountain pen. Purcell thought the pen might be sterling silver, maybe even Platinum.
“Once again, Mr. Purcell it’s very important you pay attention to my instructions,” he said, pushing the black and white square across the table with the tip of his pen as if he’d come down with leprosy if his flesh touched anything in the room.
“It’s very important to both you and your wife.”
Purcell stared down at the black and white square.
“Turn it over, Mr. Purcell.”
Purcell turned the square over and saw his wife, Cathy, for the first time in three months . Cathy in the black bra and panty set the sales girl from Victoria’s Secret helped him pick out a few days before he got pinched. He would have recognized them anywhere. The panties and bra were burned into his memory from what seemed like a thousand nights lying in his bunk, imagining his thick hands unfastening the bra hooks and then roughly pulling the panties down Cathy’s moon pale thighs. He’d tried to hold onto other things from their life together, but he had to search for them and even when they came he couldn’t be sure they actually belonged to her and weren’t just given over to her by his flawed memory.
Other than the panties and bra, the woman in the picture could’ve been anyone. Black tape covered her eyes, her mouth, her nose, her ears, and her neck. He was sure black tape covered her hands and wrists as well if they weren’t behind her back.
Shit, why did it have to be the black panties? He wondered as he felt himself stiffen. He finally took his eyes off the woman who looked like his wife and focused on the figure standing next to her. The photo cut him off just below the neck, but it wasn’t the body that drew his attention, it was the automatic pressed against his wife’s temple.
“You do understand how important it is to you and your wife that you listen to what I have to say?” The douche bag asked.
“I didn’t know anyone still used Polaroid,” Purcell said without expression.
“They do still come in handy. Now, may I continue?”
“Go ahead.”
“First, if you don’t mind, I’ll take that back.” The douche bag pulled the same routine with the pen as before, flipping the Polaroid face down and making a point of slowly dragging it across the table. He’d seen Purcell’s reaction to the photo, the longing crumpling his face. The douche bag smirked as he put the picture back in the case and snapped the locks home.
“Thank you very much,” the douche bag said.
“You’re welcome.” Purcell winced as he crushed out his smoke under his foot.
He always had a problem with authority and with those who exhibited even the least amount of it. Unlike most cons, he was servile and obedient, the type of guy who snapped to attention anytime the C.O.’s barked. He never realized it until Cathy pointed it out a couple of months before the cops busted down the front door with a sledge hammer and a warrant. Cathy tried explaining to him that with some people he just naturally fell into step and he did what they told him without question and responded how he thought they wanted. When she was done, he’d scratched his head and admitted that he didn’t quite understand and then apologized.
“See,” she said, “you don’t even get what I said and you’re the one saying you’re sorry.”
After he ended up in stir with nothing but time to think, he came to understand what Cathy had tried to tell him and he hated himself for it. He hated it and he hated knowing it was the reason why he’d never progressed past the point of being muscle in his former employer’s organization.
10 years as nothing but a head cracker, nothing but a bone breaker.
And as Purcell sat there in interview room #6 staring at this douche bag, at this man who wasn’t his lawyer, his hatred boiled to the surface. He hated that the lawyer wasn’t old Donovan; hated that someone was pointing a gun at his wife’s head; hated that he was locked up—taking the fall for something he wasn’t even responsible for—and he couldn’t do a Goddamn thing to help Cathy. The room started to go black and fuzzy and he imagined himself reaching over the table and yanking this fancy little delivery boy out of his chair, but before he could do anything, the douche bag lawyer opened his mouth and started yammering at him again. “There’s a little something my employer needs for you to do, Mr. Purcell. As long as you do what we ask, your wife will be perfectly fine.”
“Alright,” Purcell croaked out. “I’m listening.”
“You’re in the protective wing, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Along with the pederasts and the other snitches, right?”
Purcell hadn’t rolled on anybody, but the Feds were keeping him in the protective wing, hoping the appearance of cooperation and the threat that came with it from his former employer would loosen his tongue.
“Yeah, right.”
“And a new inmate was recently brought to the protective wing, yes?”
“Yeah, some cop, I think they call him the Policeman, or the Big Bacon, some shit like that.”
The douche bag nodded. “They call him the Sheriff, actually. What do you know about him?”
Purcell knew what just about everybody did. The Sheriff had been a media darling, taking every chance to get his face on TV, spouting off on everything from the dangers of drug addiction to the ravages of homosexuality on the American family. Most of square John U.S. of A fell for his line, even some of the conservative radio talk shows started talking about the Sheriff making a possible senate run. That is until political rivals tipped off the feds and they busted him with two kinds of dicks in him: twelve inches of flesh in his ass and a glass one in his mouth filled to the brim with jagged yellow hunks of meth ; a drug he’d vowed to take off the streets. The thing was he wasn’t ridding the streets of it; he was stockpiling it in his fifteen thousand square foot mini-mansion and having high school kids pedal it for him. The feds discovered pounds of the nasty yellow stuff, enough to put him away for centuries.
When the Sheriff rolled over on his suppliers instead of spending the rest of his natural born existence in a nine-by-twelve concrete and steel closet, the DEA decided the safest place for him while he signed his confessions and they shaped his new identity was in the protective wing.
But Purcell played it dumb as a rock, shrugging his shoulders and saying: “He’s some dirty cop, right?”
“That’s right, Mr. Purcell. In fact, he’s probably one of the dirtiest cops ever. He’s the type of dirty cop who makes my employers nervous.” The douche bag lawyer started tapping his fancy pen against the table top with metronome rhythm. “And my employers are not the type of people who like feeling nervous, Mr. Purcell. They would rather simply take care of irritants like the Sheriff and move on with their lives and businesses without interruption.”
Purcell just stared.
“You understand what I’m asking of you, Mr. Purcell?
Do you understand what I’m saying, retard? Half-wit? Wet brain?
Purcell kept his mouth shut and the douche bag errand boy shook his head, his superior smirk turning the corners of his mouth up a little higher, threatening to turn into a smile, before finally he just spat what he wanted. “My employers want you to kill the Sheriff, Mr. Purcell.”
“Let me guess,” Purcell said, “if I don’t you’ll hurt Cathy.”
“No, Mr. Purcell, we’ll kill Cathy.” Surprise, surprise. “And my employers would like you to have our little task accomplished within the next 48 hours.”
“Why me?” Purcell asked, lighting another smoke.
“What do you have to lose, Mr. Purcell?” he said, pushing out of his seat, gathering his brief case. “You’re going to be here for the rest of your natural life, so what’s one more charge?”
“How do you expect me to get at him?”
The douche bag turned, his face lit with a huge smile.
“That’s really none of my concern, Mr. Purcell, I’m sure you’ll find a way.” The douche bag patted Purcell on the shoulder, his grin wide and confident; he wasn’t expecting Purcell to grab his hand, or for Purcell’s grip to be so strong that it nearly ground the bones of his wrist into dust.
As the bones cracked and painfully shifted in the douche bag lawyer’s hand and wrist, and the smell of his shit filled the room, Purcell realized there were certain advantages to being nothing but muscle. Purcell stood from his chair and plucked the brushed steel fountain pen from the lawyer's other hand and uncapped it with his teeth. The douche bag squealed a bit as Purcell pressed the pen tip against his throat.
“Now, you need to listen to me, Mr. Not My Lawyer. You yell for the guards, I’ll bury this fucking pen in your throat. Understand?”
The douche bag nodded.
“I’ll do it. I’ll kill the Sheriff. And you let Cathy go. No tricks.” Purcell pressed the sharp tip of the pen into the man’s throat, a thin line of blood coursing down his neck “Or I’ll kill you next and that’s a promise. Nod if you understand?”
He did, eyes watering, his thin lower lip grinding under his perfect teeth.
“And it’s gonna take a little longer than 48 hours to get at ‘em. So you can tell your bosses to go fuck themselves with that one,” Purcell said and released the douche bag who wasn’t his lawyer and returned the pen.
* * *
“What’s he saying?”
He cupped his hand over the cell and shot her a look. “Would you shut the fuck up?”
“I just want to know—“
“Quiet!”
She bit her lip and plopped down on the couch, folding her slender feet under her ass. She watched his brow furrow and moved onto chewing her nails, trying not to interrupt him as he nodded and uh-huhed. When he hung up pocketed the phone and ran his hands through his graying hair. Cathy tore a hang-nail from her middle finger. Blood welled around the wound, slightly hissing, she stuck the finger in her mouth and suck at it.
“He’s gonna do it.”
“I knew he would. He was always good at doing what he was told.” She said and smiled, blood staining her teeth.
* * *
Every day at 9 AM, two U.S Marshalls escorted The Sheriff from his private cell to interview room #1, where he detailed his years of corruption: Naming names, ruining careers, and shattering marriages. But Purcell didn’t care about that. He cared about afterward, when the Marshall’s escorted him back to the cell block, and he made his daily stop at the toilet on the second floor above the administration wing.
A deck of Camels minus two bought Purcell a shank: A carpenter’s square with the shortest part of the L broken off and wrapped in electrical tape while the longest part was sharpened to a point. A cashed in favor bought him a trustee’s access to the second floor.
When he was a citizen, the Sheriff had been a handsome man. Tall and well built, a square jawed Messiah in jeans that often walked hand-in-hand with his wife, his high school sweetheart and a former state beauty queen. He had been given to striking bicep bulging poses while delivering straight shots from the hip. While he still walked erect and looked straight ahead, in stir he cut a much different figure. His whitewalls had grown out to a shaggy, ear hugging mess. Without the trailer park fat-burner, he had put on enough weight to bulge the orange jumpsuit everywhere but the arms.
The restroom door opened. The Marshalls laughter echoed in the tiled bathroom, as the Sheriff called back, before the door swung closed.
“I’ll have another one for you, after I do some thinking.”
Purcell’s sneakers squeaked on the seat of the second stall. He winced, but the Sheriff didn’t seem to notice, whistling a Waylon Jennings tune at the polished metal mirror above the sinks.
Purcell eased himself off the toilet, gripped the sharpened square, and flung the door open. He rushed across the floor, cracking the back of the Sheriff’s with a stiff elbow and kicking his feet out from under him. The Sheriff landed hard and slid underneath the sink, banging his head against the drain pipe.
The restroom door swung open.
“You alright in there?” A voice called from outside.
Purcell held the point of the shank below the Sheriff’s eye and he up at him, and calmly said:
“Yeah, I’m okay in here boys, just a little too much red meat is all.”
Laughter and then door swung closed again.
“Someone wants you dead.” Purcell said, something a little like panic in his voice.
The Sheriff looked at the make shift blade in Purcell’s hand. “Ah can see that.”
“It’s not me.”
“It’s not? Then maybe you kin just swing that over thataway.”
Purcell lowered the point to his side and the Sheriff scooted out from beneath the sink.
“They got my wife,” Purcell told him. “They said if I don’t kill you, they’ll kill her.”
“Ah see.” The Sheriff stood and turned his back to Purcell, fixing his hair in the mirror and dusting off his jumper. He sucked something out from between his teeth and strolled over to one of the urinals.
“So, now that we’ve had this palaver, what are we going to do?” The Sheriff asked.
Purcell looked at the weapon in his hands. It didn’t have any answers.
“You haven’t thought about that, have you, boy?” The Sherriff asked.
“You got any juice left?”
The Sheriff turned while tucking himself back into his jumper and patted Purcell’s shoulder.
“Son, Ah ain’t even shook it off yet. The zipper ain’t even closed.” He adjusted his crotch and smiled. “Ah can call all sorts of favors in and all Ah have to do is forget a date, forget a name, forget a lonely grave off some where out in the desert. And forgetting? That’s about the easiest thing at my age.”
“I need you to get her out. Get her safe. And I’ll help you. I’ll watch your back while you’re in here.”
“Yes, you will, son, yes, you will.” The Sheriff took a cell phone out of his jumpsuit pocket. He held it up and shook it at Purcell. “This is supposed to be if I have any sudden insights, anything important I need to confess. Now who was it that came to you about me?”
“I don’t know, they sent some slick as shit lawyer to talk to me. I just saw his initials on his briefcase. I think it was RC?”
“Ah, Rory Cavanaugh,” He shook his head, “I’ve known that boy since he was in high school. Practically put himself through law school with all the shit he moved for me.” The Sheriff looked down at his phone and started to scroll through his contact list.
“What’re you doing?”
“What you think Ah’m doing?” The Sheriff found the number he was looking for and pressed send.
“Are you telling the Feds?”
“No, son. Ah’m going to give ‘em a come-to-Jesus, and make sure they get your girl out safe. That all right with you?”
Purcell nodded. “I want a picture.”
“Of the corpses?”
“No, of my wife, I need to know she’s safe.”
“That all?”
“Can you make it a Polaroid?”
“Son, ah could get you the damned Zapruder film if you wanted.”
* * *
“We’re out,” Cathy called from the kitchen.
He sipped his watery Bourbon and didn’t look up from the TV.
“Of what?” He asked and took another drink..
“Electrical tape,” she said. “But we’ve still got Duct.” Cathy pulled a long strip from the roll and snapped taunt.
“Yeah?” He asked, looking up now.
She rolled the tape twice around her left wrist and let the roll dangle. Leaning against the doorway she held her arm up. “There’s a whole roll.”
“Yeah?” He said as he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “You liked it that much, huh?”
“I did,” she said, turning her back to him and unfastening the top button of her tight jeans. He flicked the television off and stood, crossing to her as she lowered her zipper. She tried to kick her legs out of her pants when he grabbed her from behind, the two of them stumbling over each other as he pushed her against the table.
He gripped her wrists and pulled both over her head and quickly wound the duct tape around them. “Oh, yeah, baby—“ she started and he rolled his eyes, tearing the roll free while keeping her pinned with his hips. “You know what you baby wants?”
He growled and she mistook the noise for excitement and giggled and started to speak again, but he tore a six inch strip of tape and slapped it against her mouth.
Fucking finally, he thought before stepping back and undoing his own zipper. He pulled himself out and stopped, cocking his like a dog. What the fuck is that noise?
Cathy didn’t notice her man’s inattention as she ground herself against the table, muttering through the silver tape. It wasn’t until the first two black clad men entered the room with lead pipes gripped in their hands that she opened her eyes and started to try screaming through her gag.
* * *
A trustee walked past Purcell’s cell and tossed a brown paper bag onto his rack. He was taking a shit and stared at the small package like it was going to explode. He finished up and picked up the bag, taking his time with opening it. He reached inside and pulled out a small bundle of Polaroid’s wrapped up with a rubber band. He stared at the back of the exposures and read a short note written on the white edge in careful script:
The bitch was in on it. She was getting filled up by the guy who sent you. Still thought you might want the pictures, though.
He turned over the stack and Cathy stared back at him. Her blonde hair tousled, skin shiny with exertion, and a rectangle of tape dangling from the corner of her swollen lips. He eased himself down onto his rack, unfastened the rubber band and started thumbing through the snap shots.
Fucking cunt.
At least the pictures would make good beat off material for the next couple of months.
BIO: Chad Eagleton lives in Indiana. He has been published in DZ Allen's Muzzle Flash, Pulp Pusher, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, and Beat To A Pulp. When he's not writing, he's busy trying to avoid mowing the lawn.
Keith Rawson is a little known pulp writer who lives in the alkaline desert wastelands of southern Arizona with his wife and very energetic three-year-old daughter. His stories have appeared in such publications as Plots with Guns, Pulp Pusher, CrimeWav.com, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir and many others. You can find him most nights dicking around on either Twitter or Facebook, or stroking his already overinflated ego at his blog Bloody Knuckles, Callused Fingertips(http://bloodyknucklescallusedfingertips.blogspot.com/)
