ONE: If somebody killed my son, that means somebody's getting kill’t.
The first light that hit Ray’s face as a free man was met in equal force with a cold, bitter wind. January in Chicago loomed towards him as he stood, duffel bag in one hand, watching a dusky gold, beat to shit Toyota Corolla pull up in front of the wide swinging gates of the MCC. Squinting against the light and switching his grip so that the duffel hung over his shoulder instead of limply at his side, he walked down the half-dozen steps to the curb, hesitating four steps away from the car.
The figure in the driver’s seat was vaguely familiar, though after a time they all tended to blur together. This one had a set jaw and a shaved head, sunglasses perched on a straight nose as a defense to the cloudless Chicago winter sky. His hands were gloved, which struck Ray as an odd choice - did people really use driving gloves still? Was it an intimidation thing? If you’re going to wear leather to protect leather, wasn’t there just leather-on-leather crimes between gloves and the steering wheel?
Ray thought about how, in all of those TV shows and movies, the ex-con gets out to someone waiting at the car - maybe sitting on the hood - and they would meet their newly freed companion, share some witty dialogue, hand shake, and both would circle the car together to hop behind the wheel.
The figure didn’t exit the car.
This should be Carey, Ray thought, still keeping his distance. He could’ve called Carey. They wanted him to know he didn’t have options, but he did - he could have called her. He’d spent so much time thinking of her face, summoning her eyes, holding his, her slender hands snaking across his shoulders. But he hadn’t wanted to - or couldn’t - and so he was here, staring at this beat up Corolla.
After a few more moments of waiting, Ray closed the distance, popped open the back door, and took a seat behind the driver.
“Safest spot in the vehicle,” he muttered, staring out his window. The driver didn’t acknowledge it.
The Corolla pulled away from the curb with a slight squeak of braking system, rolled back into Chicago midafternoon traffic. Van Buren led to Clark street, and they were headed south, away from his home for the past three years. The Corolla stopped and started in fits, the onward push slowed significantly by other drivers in the same lulling rhythm - stop, start. Stop, start. Lots of time in that rhythm to be lulled to sleep - a morning of paperwork, waiting, talking to stuffy men in uniform who eyed Ray with the sort of contempt only a man convicted of illegally gambling on a murder island can muster. Ray fought his closing eyelids during the entire drive, staring at the sidewalk and the people walking upon it. If he jumped out, what would the driver do? What kind of instructions did he have?
“This your full time gig or…?”
No answer.
“Like, what, so you drive around ex-cons for the big guy? Sit in this piece of shit car and wait for the call on your Motorolla T-600 flip phone?”
That got a huff - humour or annoyance, Ray didn’t know. Either worked. He mostly did it for the reaction, anyway. Ray rolled his head back against the seat, touching the ends of his hair with his fingertips. He played with it for a moment, curling it around a finger, wondering if his barber would make a house call tomorrow. Special occasion and all that.
“How many of you guys does he have on call, anyways? Do they make you in a fuckin’ vat?”
“Don’t curse,” came the growl from the driver, wheeling the car right on a red light, narrowly - and expertly - fitting the beater neatly between a beat up Ranger and a shiny looking lexus.
Ray opened his mouth to retort to this, then closed it, idly scratching at a scar that ran down one side of his pale face, half-hidden behind the pathetic growth of stubble he’d cultivated for six months. He’d been given the scar as a little reminder, in his first week. A little badge of what the uniformed gentlemen in MCC felt about people who bet on child murderers. Both uniforms had gotten in on it - those in orange had held him still and those in blue had turned their backs.
It had been a long three years.
“My bad,” Ray said, “but if you’re going to give me the silent treatment for much longer-”
The driver left one hand on the wheel for a moment, reached inside his jacket pocket, and tossed a sleek looking cell phone in Ray’s direction. It was scuffed at the corners as if it had taken a beating, and when the light hit the screen he could see a spider web of hairline cracks, stretching across the lower half of it.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Sandwich,” the driver responded dryly, before adding, “turn it on.”
Ray’s fingers ran over the phone again, nail catching on the spider web, one by one. His thumb touched the side, the little power button, and the phone flared to life. A Saumsung logo that swooped and winked with an obnoxious ding. He tapped at it impatiently, waiting for it to go away. He was greeted with a home screen with a single, cheerful icon on it.
“Listen,” Ray said, but the sentence died in his mouth, crumbling to ash.
This couldn’t possibly be happening again.
“Look,” he tried again, “I don’t know if-”
“I’m just the driver.” Just-The-Driver said.
“But I didn’t sign up for - look man, I need to get my shit together. I need to find a job, show up at the halfway, meet with my P.O. I can’t- you guys can’t expect me to-”
The Opera icon stared at him, a little, cheerful O in red and white, meaning so many things to a precious few. He’d used it extensively, religiously, cracked doors with it. He’d used it to observe six variations of the same theme - hopelessness and relentlessness, a march of death where numbers dwindled from three digits to the loneliest digit. He’d bore witness to an insurmountable, undeniably large amount of violence, of transgressions before God, as part of a community that didn’t turn its back on such things but examined them clearly and closely.
He’d argued passionately if decapitation
with a knife counted as death by knife wound. He’d groaned in horrified elation as a bright young girl with a sunny smile devoured - literally - the competition. He’d slowed frames down to see if the time of death he’d predicted came true, if the figures in the purple smoke were the boy or the girl. He’d gone on ASL websites to figure out what that one dude had signed to the asian chick after she’d ganked him.
All behind that little, cheerful red and white O.
“I don’t- I can’t,” Ray said, speaking it plainly to the open, flavoured air of the fucked-up Corolla, the smell of stale booze and recent cigarettes suddenly filling his nostrils as the car took a sharp left and the vents caught his face for a brief moment, blasting hot air over him.
Holding his thumb over the O made it wiggle slightly, but no red X appeared on it for deletion. He tapped elsewhere on the screen to stop its dance.
“I can’t, man. If they catch me again - if they…”
“I’m just the driver,” repeated good ol’ JTD. JTD was cool as a cucumber, his stupid driving gloves sure and confident on the steering wheel, the squeak of leather-on-leather crimes making Ray’s head spin.
“Fucking Bill,” Ray spat, “it’s all fucking Bill’s fault. He had to go and fucking ghost which meant the fucking cops which meant his fucking phone history. Building a case for four fucking years. Fucking Bill. I bet he’s not even fucking dead. I bet he’s fucking holding his fucking-”
“
Language!” good ol’ JTD barked, glaring at Ray from behind his black tinted sunglasses, one amber eye visible through the gap between temple and glass.
“Bill deserves
language bucko,” Ray said, but quieted nonetheless. The phone went to sleep mode. Ray woke it up with a tap on the power button, but it stayed in his lap, limply pointed towards his inner thigh. His gaze was drawn back to the sidewalk, and his thoughts were drawn back to jumping out. JTD wasn’t even driving that fast - he could hit the pavement and be out, the phone and the little cheerful red and white O left far behind.
But JTD had a boss, and JTD’s boss probably wouldn’t let him get that far.
He should’ve asked Carey to pick him up instead. He’d have had to grovel, sure, but Carey might have been talked into it, if he had said he was sorry. Fuck, she might have been happy to do it if he’d just told her the truth about what he did for a living.
But he hadn’t asked Carey because he was a loser. When the big guy called him personally and asked if he needed a favour, Ray had accepted, because that’s what you did when the big guy called. Especially when you’d spent the last time losing money - yours, Carey’s, the big guy’s.
Carey probably didn’t want to see him again.
The screen went dark again. Ray’s fingers idly went towards the window control, cracked it a little to let some of the cold air in, then cracked it wider, measuring the phone width between his thumb and forefinger.
JTD turned his head slightly, just to make Ray aware of his awareness. Ray closed the window.
“So I don’t have a choice?” Ray asked, rubbing the skin between dark brows.
“Just-”
“-the driver?”
“He said you were quick.”
Ray exhaled in amusement, shifting in his seat, staring a hole in the back of JTD’s head. Finally, he pushed the power button, lit the screen up, and tapped the little cheerful red and white O.
The app knew where to go. The app knew where it wanted him. In a blink, it lit up - black screen, white text, familiar Courier New font blinking for him, inviting him. Beyond this page was the feed that he’d spent most of his young life on. Beyond this screen was an archive of extensive footage, hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage from every available stream of the events.
Ray clicked on the black, and the keyboard popped up at the bottom half of the phone. Slowly, he began to type.
username: XRay99
Password: ********************
He let go of the keyboard and set the phone aside, waiting as it encrypted, processed, spat out data. The screen went dark again, but Ray didn’t touch it, feeling slightly sick to his stomach, a hit of the Hub, when he was three years sober.
He didn’t know why, but he felt like crying.
Ray tapped the screen again, and the feeds were open, dormant. Chat wasn’t scrolling past. The Bill event had resulted in security being tighter, more furious.
Ray tossed the phone on the passenger seat, sighed, leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. JTD was driving him, and his account was logged in.
The car moved through a winter Chicago morning, moving closer and closer outside of the city border. JTD handled the wheel with squeaks of leather on leather. The phone sat beside him, unlocked and logged in, waiting for input. Ray succumbed to the exhaustion, curled slightly in his seat, his head on the cool glass of the car window. He tried to summon an image of Carey’s face.
It didn’t arrive.
