Bigger Than Jesus Read online

  You think what a happy coincidence it would be if Marv had a brain aneurysm just then. That would be ironic and helpful. Maybe if you could remember all the words to the Hail Mary, whatever psycho is in charge of the universe would give you a break. You close your eyes, make an earnest wish, and snap them open in a hard blink. Nope, Marv still looks remarkably healthy. Harv did say Marv worked out a lot.

  “So this little dishwasher gets pissed off because what started as a chuckle spreads around the room. ‘Gimme something to put this money in! Gimme something to put all your money in!’ And the wise guys just start to laugh harder. That only pisses off the little guy more. They ain’t taking him seriously. That’s the one thing on earth nobody can stand for long. So the dishwasher? He screams louder! And then, just to make sure they see his point of view, you know, for emphasis? He fires off another cartridge into the ceiling! Just to make his point! You see the problem?”

  “It was a double-barrelled shotgun. He’s out of ammo.”

  Marv touches his index finger to his nose.

  “The wise guys all stop laughing at once and everybody round the table, the bodyguards, even a couple of the hookers, according to legend…they all pull out their gats and take a bead on the idiot. He doesn’t show up for work again, you know what I mean?”

  “I like that story. Would you like to tell me a few more, say until the sun explodes? I can wait.”

  “Heh-heh. You just get one, but do you know the point of the story, Mr. Diaz?”

  “Observe the golden rule? Temper your ambition? It’s always darkest right before everything gets really fucked up?”

  Marv gives you another genuine smile. How he does it, it’s creepy. “My point is, you’re that guy and you’ve shot your wad. You gave Pete some story about counterfeit cash that got him to hold off on killing you. That’s one shot in the ceiling.”

  “In my defence, I was also avoiding torture at the time and I was improvising.”

  “And you had the key to the skim and you lost it.”

  “If I’d had it on me, I’m pretty sure Denny would have beaten it out of me. Like, even if I’d swallowed it. Like I said, I was improvising at the time.”

  “Uh-huh. The upshot is, you’re out of stories. Jimmy wanted you to know that he knows you’re fulla shit. Pete knows there’s no counterfeit scheme that will make him the new boss and he’s not going to clear Jimmy Lima out of the way. You’ve got nothing left to bargain with.”

  He raises the Tech 9 and you sense the straight line of the energetic connection between the muzzle and the spot in the middle of your forehead where the bullet will drill in. “And we’ve come to the period after The End.”

  “I might have one thing.”

  “No, thanks, Jesus. I enjoyed our chat, though. You were a funny guy.”

  “Do you know who killed your brother?” you ask.

  His hand tightens around the gun. If the Tech 9 had a hair trigger, it would have bucked in his hand by now and you’d already be dead. You close your eyes and count to three. You’re going to live, maybe another moment longer. You heard on some morning radio trivia show once that the technical definition of a moment is just 90 seconds long.

  “Harv is…dead?” Marv asks. “Who did it? Was it you?” He raises his gun again.

  You shake your head vigorously. You can’t tell him it was Lily, but there are plenty of people you hate on whom you can throw blame like flaming napalm. “Jake did it. On Jimmy’s orders.”

  “You’re lying. That’s all you do.”

  “Have you heard from Harv?”

  Marv’s eyes flicker and, for the first time, three deep worry lines appear on his forehead.

  “I killed Panama Bob on Jimmy’s orders because Bob was skimming and Jimmy wants to own The Machine. Jimmy obviously wants me dead because I know about the skim and Jimmy wants it all. I was supposed to get it, or the key to it, anyway, before I whacked Bob. I didn’t expect him to go crazy ass and run out the window onto a ledge and hide behind a gargoyle. Jimmy assumed the skim would be on the premises. Now that Jimmy’s got the key to the skim, he wants everybody who knows about it dead. That’s me, Denny, Harv and you.”

  Marv lowers the gun and pulls out his cell phone. It rings and rings. At least it does on Marv’s end of the line. On Harv’s end, maybe it’s burbling underwater somewhere deep and dark. When his twin fails to answer, Marv grows another worry line. He gives you snake eyes. “You have a history of bullshit.”

  “Let me dial Jake. If I’m lying, you can shoot me in the balls.”

  Marv’s eyebrows shoot up. After a short pause he says, “Respect.” He presses the key on his cell for speaker phone and hands it to you.

  You dial Jake and he answers on the first ring. “Jake! They already found Harv’s body! You moron! What did you do? You don’t know your job, man!”

  “Bullshit!” Jake says. “He’s never going to pop up. Where’d you hear different? And why are you talking this shit on a c—?”

  You close the cell and hand it back to Marv.

  “Bastard!” Marv cries.

  You look away and study the carpet to give him a few minutes to grieve.

  When he quietens, you clear your throat. “Harv and I were talking about a truce so we could combine forces and go after Jimmy. He won’t stop until anyone who knows anything about his power grab or the skim is dead. You know that.”

  Marv tosses his handgun onto the couch cushion beside him and buries his face in his hands, holding nothing back. You’d cry, too. Harv had that H tattoo on his neck and Marv has his matching M. As muscle, a team of identical twins, they did look pretty cool, like a couple of heavies out of a Bond movie. Without Harv, Marv’s just another douche nozzle with a neck tattoo.

  “Jake’s gonna die for killing my brother and Jimmy’s gotta die for giving the order,” Marv says.

  “Then you better let me live so I can help you. You’re going to need me if you’re going to storm the castle. You don’t want to run in there without enough firepower like some amateur dishwasher.”

  “Valid,” he says. His face still in his hands, he asks in a small voice, “What do we do for firepower?”

  “Denny keeps his arsenal behind you in the kitchen. That big freezer doesn’t work as a freezer. It’s all in there.”

  When Marv composes himself, he looks up at you with puffy red eyes, looking like the little boy he must have been at some point. We’re all little boys. Sometimes, in moments like these, it leaks out.

  “Jimmy’s got some guys on high alert,” Marv says. “How are we going to get to him?”

  You consider that a moment and an idea forms. It’s not a good one, but it’s all you’ve got. “Your job is to find me and maybe get the locker location for the key, right?”

  “The main thing was to kill you, though.” He shrugs. “Up until a few minutes ago, anyway, but the idiot little Cuban enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “Did you call them to let them know I was here?”

  “Of course not. I wasn’t going to give away my position and give up my front row seat to the grenade thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Stop bustin’ balls. My point is, as far as Jimmy’s concerned, you’re still on Team Lima, right?”

  Marv gives you a reaper’s smile. “Yeah, Machine-ready.”

  “Then I got a way into the castle. No idea how we’ll get out, but there’s a safe way in.”

  “Safe?”

  “Safe-ish.”

  “Rock it, Rocket. Lay it out for me.”

  THE ULTIMATE LIAR

  “Paper or plastic?” Bug Man asks. In his mirrored sunglasses, you hardly recognize yourself. You have never seen yourself in terror. Terror makes your face longer. Your hands are tied to the rail of his boat. He can do anything he wants. When the Captain struck your father with the butt of his rifle, there was no time for hatred. When the Captain threw your father overboard, there was only room for fear. Later, you hated the sea, but even then, you knew that it was n
ature. Nature is not personal. But there is time to hate the Bug Man. There will be much time to discover new depths of loathing.

  “Are you going to be a good boy? Good boys get paper.”

  You piss yourself and the yellow puddle wets the Bug Man’s leather deck shoes.

  “Bad boy.” He slips a clear plastic bag over your head. “I own you. You belong to me.”

  Your face is hot and the bag tightens, wrapping your face in a transparent shroud. You didn’t have time to hold your breath. You want to scream but that’s a waste of breath. Your vision fills with black spots. At first you’re afraid, but soon you welcome the nonexistence the spots bring. The black spots grow large to meet each other to build infinite darkness. You are dead and the Bug Man can only kill you once.

  No, you aren’t that lucky.

  When you wake in the dark, you feel small. Your body aches. The Bug Man pushed you down the stairs. You sort of remember that: flight, like when your father threw you into the air to land in the water of the shallow end of the hotel pool he was supposed to be cleaning. Then you realize you were not flying but falling and the pain came. You crashed, banging and scraping against the jagged edges of rough wooden stairs to the cold, concrete floor. You are in the basement of what must be a large house and there is someone here with you.

  You pray to Jesus. You ask the Virgin Mother for help. You ask God if it’s an angel breathing in the dark. (Do angels breathe, or are they more like fish? Are they more like divine birds with gills? You hope so.)

  The angel listens to you until you tire of asking God for the same thing over and over: Deliver you from evil and give you your family back. As the silence stretches out, the angel moves, shuffling. The only light is a line under the door at the top of the stairs. Moving to the stairs, the silhouette reveals himself. He is a boy, older than you, or at least bigger. As soon as he speaks, you are crushed again. God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary would understand you. They would speak kind and comforting words, but this boy speaks in English. You don’t, not yet.

  God has turned his back on you, even though you are named for his only begotten son. “For God so loved the world, he sent his only begotten son…” God the Father didn’t send help when Christ was on the cross. You never understood that, but you think of your mother’s Bible lessons and the fear is fresh. If God didn’t send help for Jesus Christ suffering on the cross, he probably won’t send an army of angels to rescue Jesus Salvador Umberto Luis Diaz.

  The boy chatters on. It’s gibberish. He repeats something and you pick it out of the torrent of English words. You ask him to speak slower, not to understand, but to commit the words to memory in case you live to understand more later. Maybe he understands you a little, or maybe he just repeats the same thing, like he’s praying, too. He says the words into the night because God’s not listening. The boy says the same words until you’re sure you will never forget. That night, you dream your first English words: “My name is Darren Hill and I’m from Sarasota. If you try to run away, they’ll kill me. I’m next. I’m next! I’m next! I’m next!”

  Bright, white lights behind cages of thin wire mesh blaze on, dazzling you. A tall woman with her hair pinned high on the back of her head clacks down the wooden stairs carrying a silver tray. Before she is two steps down, the heavy metal door swings fast on tight springs and slams shut behind her with a click. She puts the tray on a portable table against one wall. The basement isn’t as large as you imagined. The walls are cushioned with a padding you soon learn is soundproofed. In the dark, you had been too afraid to explore the dimensions of your prison.

  “I am Tia Marta.” The woman speaks in Spanish, but with a German accent you had heard from some guests around the hotel in Cuba. “If you behave, there will be rewards. Wonderful rewards. If not? Not.”

  Your mother read fairy tales at bedtime. Evil kings held princes in dark chambers. Evil witches trapped princesses in high towers. The Bug man imprisoned you in his dungeon. Tia Marta cast a spell. You never knew if she drugged you with the chicken sandwich or the milk.

  Before you finish eating, your body slows until it feels like a single blink could be measured with a watch. You slip to the floor and stare as Tia Marta turns the white boy around to show you the danger. Across his buttocks and back are lines. Some are old and healed. Many are fresh slashes of angry red welts.

  The first English words you learned were: sir, mistress, yes, please and thank you. Tia Marta told you in Spanish that was all you’d need to know for the first few weeks. She didn’t add “…until you are broken.” You learned that later, too.

  The word no is not a word you are permitted to utter. They beat you until you understand. They take away your name, too. You are not a person. You are just a boy, which is the same as being a thing like a lamp or a dishrag. Tia Marta and the Bug Man make clear in English, Spanish and with their fists and whips: Things can be thrown away easily.

  You run your finger down the list of vocabulary words. Each time your Spanish accent creeps in, Tia Marta corrects you with a sharp rap of her ruler across your knuckles.

  “After the age of nineteen, it’s all over,” she says. You aren’t sure what Tia Marta is talking about but you nod earnestly. “There’s a switch in the brain. After a certain age you don’t get any taller and you can’t talk like a native speaker anymore. Arnold Schwarzenegger came here from Austria to become the American dream, but he still got here just a little too late to lose the accent. Once it’s bred in the bone, it doesn’t come out. He still says ‘Cully-fornia’ and ‘red vine and vite vine’ not ‘red wine and white wine.’ You’re lucky, boy. The Sir brought me to this country too late. I was twenty. A little earlier and I could be speaking English like a Southern belle. Wouldn’t that be charming?”

  “Yes, mistress.” You speak up clearly or she’ll slap you.

  “But my accent is pretty as it is, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, mistress.” But not too loud or she’ll slap you so hard, her fingers will leave a red outline on your cheek. Or she’ll use her long fingernails and leave a mark, like she does more and more with the other boy.

  “I’m very pleased with the progress in your attitude, boy.”

  “Yes, mistress. Thank you, mistress.” Like the story Tia Marta told you of the Medusa, you must never look her in the eye. And you must never, ever, look too long at the key on the heavy gold chain that hangs from Tia Marta’s neck.

  “Good boy. So good, in fact, I think you’re ready for some training. I’ve waited long enough. How about we watch a movie you’ll like? You are going to love this. It’s an old one called Fast Times at Ridgemount High. To improve your English, listen to the actors’ diction and pay particular attention to the girl in the red bikini.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  You don’t understand the jokes and you’re afraid to laugh at the wrong times, so you smile for Tia Marta. Then the pretty girl in the red bikini opened the front of her bikini top to show her breasts. Tia Marta reaches for you, her long fingers pushing into your lap, grasping and clawing as you squeal. You are so shocked you stand as if you could leave. Tia Marta is so upset, she calls the Sir.

  The Bug Man strides in wearing a three-piece powder blue suit. He is especially angry because you interrupted a business call. He has to take off his jacket and vest to give you what he calls “a proper punishment.” He leaves big splotches of purple bruises that take weeks to finally yellow. Tia Marta slashes her long nails across your chest.

  Under terrible circumstances, time passes so very slowly.

  Finally…“Paper or plastic?”

  Paper is just for scaring you and keeping you off-balance and clueless as to where you are and when the next blow will come. Plastic is near-death, or at least it has been so far. You’ve learned to gauge his moods and there isn’t a chance he’ll put a paper bag over your head tonight.

  For the first time, you answer bravely, “Plastic, Sir! And please don’t stop. Use the plastic bag and don’t stop!”
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  But you aren’t that lucky. The countless days and awful nights melt into each other and for the rest of your time with Tia Marta and the Bug Man, you are no longer allowed the dignity of clothing, just like Darren Hill from Sarasota.

  “You are my smartest and best student, boy.”

  “Thank you, mistress.”

  “You’ve earned your new place.”

  You don’t know what she means until Darren Hill from Sarasota, your companion in the dark for three years, disappears. You didn’t try to run away, but the Bug Man took him anyway. Darren was growing into a man and so Tia Marta is done with him.

  One night, soon after Darren’s exit, a little boy crashes down the wooden stairs to the floor. The light from under the door catches the boy’s terrified face for just a moment. He cries out and babbles in Spanish how he is afraid and he begs you to take him home. You hold him and rock him. This is…familiar. In the dark, the boy is as small as Rodolpho. You beg him not to cry. “If you cry, Tia Marta and the Bug Man might come down here.”

  You haven’t been allowed to speak Spanish for a long time but, to calm the boy, you risk it and, once spoken, you find you can’t stop. “My name is Jesus Salvador Umberto Luis Diaz and I am from Cuba. Don’t try to run away or they’ll kill me. I’m next. I’m next!”

  Footsteps.

  “Sh! Sh! Please, shut up. Please!”

  The footsteps are sharp and fast. That’s not the Bug Man. His step is heavy and slower. Tia Marta almost always wears high heels and sometimes she uses them in terrible, painful ways.

  “Please be quiet! Sh! Rodolpho!”

  And there it is. Rodolpho. You have cried for your brother many nights after the lights were out, but you have not spoken his name since the day you tried to save him and, instead, the water turned a frothy pink.