A Vicious Circle: Chapter 8 / 13
Downfall
Chapter 8
Downfall
During their audience in the warehouse, Adam received his cut and learned the details of the new assignment. He was to infiltrate Rector’s shack in the forest to eliminate the rest of his men and secure the drugs stored there so they could be sold later. Dash believed that the shack had become their new lair and that their appearance at the old mansion had been nothing but a provocation engineered by the dead renegade.
The next day, near noon, Adam was picked up by his usual driver. Contrary to what he had grown accustomed to, Bobby wasn’t very talkative that day. Adam asked only a few harmless questions and each was met with a rather brusque reply. At times, he didn’t even bother with words but responded with mere scowls, grunts, or sighs.
Bobby finally pulled over and brought the car to rest in the same spot he had parked during Adam’s first trip into the forest.
‘Can I get a piece?’ Adam asked and stretched his hand out as ostentatiously as he could. He would never dream of confronting people who belonged to the criminal underworld without a weapon.
Bobby drew a handgun from beneath his jacket. ‘Here. Take this,’ the bearded gangster said with a face devoid of any emotions. “Hypnotized” was the first word that came to Adam’s mind as he regarded his accomplice’s physiognomy.
Styles slipped the gun between his pants and the small of his back and pushed the door open. Noticing that his meaty companion had made no move to follow, he stopped and asked why he wasn’t coming.
Bobby scratched his nose and ran his dirty fingernails through his beard. ‘Boss said it’s a one-man job. Told me just to drop you off and sit tight. That’s it.’
Adam didn’t say anything. He offered only a faint, almost imperceptible nod, got out of the car, and closed the door.
The sky was blanketed with thick, dark clouds, and from where he stood the forest appeared far more somber, far more obscure, than it had the last time he’d been here. He took a deep breath and crossed the ominous edge of the woods. This time, the trek to the shack didn’t seem as time-consuming as before, for now he knew exactly where to go.
He arrived after about fifteen minutes of trudging and treading through a seemingly never-ending coat of fallen leaves.
About ten yards away from the shack, he decided to hide behind one of the trees. He remained there for several minutes to reconnoiter his surroundings and to make sure that the path to the decrepit shelter was clear and safe. Fear was consuming him from within as he crept toward his destination, stooping surreptitiously among the trees.
How bad can it be? How many of them can be inside? What if they take me out? I can’t die here. Dash doesn’t give a shit if I walk out of this. But I do. His head felt like a nest in which his thoughts swarmed like a myriad of frantic wasps.
But there stood no cars this time, as they had when he last surveyed the area.
Adam had made it to the shack intact. He pressed his back to the wooden wall between the door and the broken window and held the gun firmly in both of his hands beside his head.
He knew one thing for sure – one wrong move and he’d be toast.
His heart was hammering in his chest, yet he forced himself to breathe as quietly as his frayed nerves would permit.
He didn’t hear anyone inside. There was but an undecipherable silence.
Are they gone? Or what if everyone’s asleep? he wondered.
But none of that mattered. It was now or never.
He reached for the door handle, but at the last millisecond he pulled back, realizing that opening the door the usual way might take too long, and could betray his covert presence. It would be better to break down the door with a solid kick.
But what if it doesn’t work the first time? Those asswipes would hear the thump. They’d know and they sure as shit wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in me! Adam contemplated again.
But he chose to take the risk and go with the first option after all.
He stood before the door and, taking a deep breath, lifted his foot.
In the same instant Adam’s boot slammed into the door, it flew inward and crashed onto the rotten floorboards. He waved his gun around and fired a couple of aimless, preventive shots.
He would’ve expected anything but what he was seeing now.
The moment he stepped inside, he saw no one, not one living soul. The hollow, uneasy silence he had noticed earlier suddenly made perfect, chilling sense.
Adam figured that if nobody was there, he might as well look for those drugs Dash wanted. He went through everything, rummaged through every drawer and locker, groped around under the bed, ripped the filthy mattress open, searched the bags that lay in the corner, yet he couldn’t find a single thing that looked even remotely like drugs.
Adam took another look around the room and caught sight of something lying on the small table next to the entrance. It was a photograph of a young couple.
‘What? B-but this… this can’t be…’ Adam whispered. He stared at the photo as the details slowly sank in.
He approached the table with slow, careful steps, and as the photograph came more clearly into focus, his nagging suspicions were hardening into absolute certainty. The faces in it began to resemble, more and more unmistakably, the very people he knew all too well.
It was as clear to him as the dazzling morning dew catching the first rays of daylight.
He knew them. He knew those faces as surely as he knew his own.
Carolyn and Peter.
He couldn’t make sense of it. What was the picture doing there, and why were they together in it, clinging, pressed so close together like that? In this filthy shack of all places! The unexpectedness and the sheer absurdity of the image defied him, too; it grinned back at him and spat in his face. He stood helpless before it, as though he had been robbed of any ability to act.
‘Merry Christmas, motherfucker!’ barked a raspy voice behind him.
‘What the h-’ Adam’s words died in his throat.
Before he could turn around, a hard blow to the back of his head sent him sprawling across the floorboards.
Adam lost consciousness at once. And as he went down, the photograph slid out of his fingers, and the two most important people in his life drifted downward after him in a slow, featherlike path onto the decaying, wooden floor.
END OF CHAPTER 8
It seems Adam has been setup. Has he gotten too big for his britches? Skillfully written throughout, Christopher, from description, to action, to ending.
Well, Adam has been rising and there was bound to be a fall. Obviously, Dash and Bobby even, have something else in mind for Adam, which is a shame, but well, this is the gangster world here. Adam should have known better. Still, I can’t quit reading. Maybe Adam can straighten all of this out before it’s too late. Great stuff, Chris.