Easy Death on Sunday Morning

EASY DEATH ON SUNDAY MORNING

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” I said softly. I knew they believed me. I could see it in their eyes. So how could I wind up stabbed to death less than a dozen seconds later?

It was supposed to be easy. I mean, how hard can it be? Go nearly to the end of the boardwalk, turn right on Benson Street, two blocks down meet Sergei, and give him five hundred bucks. One week’s worth of “juice,” interest on the fifty big ones I owe Tony “The Calabrese” Sclafano. I got the cash on me, so it’s all supposed to be easy.

Neither Tony nor Sergei want me dead, that’s for sure. How could I ever pay that all back if I’m in the ground, right? So how is it I wind up savagely murdered on this gorgeous Sunday morning?

It’s because of the geek, that’s why.

We're in early summer, and a light breeze sweeps across the Atlantic City boardwalk. It should be a hot day, that’s what they said on the weather channel, but this time of morning, so close to the sea, the temperature feels just right. The tang of ocean-laced salt floats in the air, soon to be chased by the smells of various fast food stands as they open for business. Ten AM and it’s still too early. Late night gamblers holed up in the hotels are sleeping off the excesses of the previous night, reluctant to wake up and realize just how much poorer they are.

That’s what happened to me a few weeks ago. It’s how I wound up owing fifty thousand to one of New Jersey’s worst loan sharks.

I pass the Tropicana, heading south. The sun ducks behind some gray passing clouds and if feels like an omen of some sort. Suddenly I feel a chill in spite of the warm air. I’m wearing jeans and a tee shirt that hangs below my waist, concealing the snub-nose .38 tucked in the back of my waistband. Even with all the cash I’m supposed to bring, you never can tell.

Good luck follows bad they say, or vice versa. Only thing is you make your own luck. Always.

My mother just entered an assisted living facility last week. I helped her move in and made sure she was well settled in. She’d sold the house on the water in Port Washington, Long Island, and used the proceeds to get in this high-end facility. She also gave me a hundred thousand as well as the same amount for my sister. She must have received the check because she left four messages on my cell. That’s why I never answer it.

My big sister is a lawyer on the West Coast and major pain in the ass. She’s always harping on me about my lifestyle. She’s right, of course, but I don’t need to hear that from her. That’s what ex-wives are for. In case anyone’s wondering, no I didn’t blow the hundred grand. I budgeted it. Fifty in cash, when the check clears, to get Tony and Sergei off my back, forty to start a respectable business and ten for one last high-roller weekend. That’s my financial plan.

I pass the Tropicana, last casino before the boardwalk deteriorates. A couple of hundred yards down and the area changes dramatically. All the vendors disappear and the boardwalk itself is unkempt. Graffiti and gang symbols adorn the buildings. Many are boarded up, the rest in sad disrepair. Trash litters the sidewalk and grounds where flowers and shrubs once grew. This is the Atlantic City tourists avoid, and for good reason.

I reach Benson Street, get off the boardwalk and head west. A homeless man half asleep under the decrepit stairs lets out a string of unintelligible curses. Three black teenagers in hooded sweatshirts sit on the stoop of a brick building that looks ready to fall down and die. Gangsta Rap plays from a boom box with lyrics of violent death. I feel their eyes on me, but I know the routine: Keep walking with a light swagger. My hand briefly rolls back, brushing the butt of the .38 beneath the tee shirt.

Two more blocks and Sergei is there. He leans on the bent street sign and watches me approach. I’d peg Sergei somewhere around mid-fifties, certainly old enough to have known the former Soviet Union before immigrating to the US along with a flock of others who came to be known as the Russian Mafia.

Sergei is dangerous. I know that. His face is pockmarked. A scar runs across one cheek from a poorly stitched knife slash. A prison tattoo peeks out from the collar of his white shirt. He’s neatly shaved and smells of cheap cologne.

A Cadillac Escalade sits at the curb, next to Sergei. A low, booming base comes out of the vehicle and I can see two large, dreadlocked figures, one in front, one in back. Muscles, Sergei always takes them.

Funny, how the mob’s changed these days. RICOH statutes, skillfully wielded by the FBI decimated the New York and Jersey crime families. “The Calabrese” is one of the few remaining Italians at the top of the game. But things have twisted. The enforcers are now Russian expatriates and gang-bangers.

I stop in front of Sergei, reach in my pocket and hand him a roll of bills. He puts it in his shirt but doesn’t count it. “Is all there?” he says.

“How stupid do I look, Sergei? It’s all there.”

He nods and says nothing.

“Be ready next week, Sergei. I’m paying you off completely, fifty thou.”

He raises one eyebrow and looks at me. He reminds me of a pit bull contemplating an attack.

“You have luck at table, yes?”

“No, I came into some money, want you fuckers off my back.”

Sergei smiles. “You’ll be back. And is fifty-five, not fifty.”

I nod, that’s the deal. Ten percent more if paid within a year - a loan shark’s version of the prepayment penalty. I turn my back and walk away. “See ya next week,” I throw over my shoulder.

I cover the two blocks back to the boardwalk. The three teenagers are now gone and so is the homeless man who cursed at me earlier. I climb the dozen stairs back to the boardwalk and that’s when I see the geek.

Geek, Nerd, whatever you want to call him, he clearly doesn’t belong in this neighborhood. Thick glasses, a slight overbite and goofy expression that screams to every predator, steal from me, beat me up, fuck with me anyway your want, I’m weak, I’ll never fight back.

The geek is walking slowly, looking down and fiddling with some electronic device in his hand. The poor bastard must have been walking for a while, oblivious. Just a few yards from him, directly in his path is a very big dose of trouble.

The three teenagers from before are right there, joined by a fourth. This one is a bit older, a thin, nasty looking Hispanic wearing wife-beater tee and baggy low riders. They’re pointing and snickering at the geek who continues toward them, still oblivious.

Two remain in front of him while the others move on either side, slightly behind. Now he must have sensed something because he looks up and suddenly seems to realize where he is. The whole thing reminds me of a National Geographics special on wild dogs, surrounding prey before tearing it apart and devouring it. Something strikes a chord deep in my psyche.

I’m a former Army Ranger, Afghanistan veteran. I work out and have some martial art under my belt. But it wasn’t always so. My high school years were pure hell. Once, I was that geek.

There was no internal debate with myself, not even a conscious decision. I just stepped forward between the hoodlums and stopped next to the geek. He looked as if I was Jesus, suddenly returning to earth on the Atlantic City boardwalk.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, “I think you’re kinda lost. How’s about we walk back to the casinos and you can buy me coffee.” I spoke to the geek but looked at the two gang-bangers facing him.

“Whadda you, his mother?” the tallest one said, as he shifted something under his sweats.

“Something like that,” I said reaching in my back and pulling the .38, letting it just dangle from my hand at my side. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” I added softly. No mistaking the warning. A serious handgun, all locked and cocked, will do that. The situation’s dynamics had turned completely.

Both teenager’s eyes widened and neither replied. I took the geek’s arm and turned back. That’s when it happened.

I’d forgotten about the fourth guy, the thin, nasty Hispanic. He’d slipped behind and to my left and the murderous little hood was faster than a pissed-off rattler.

The knife went in just to the left of my belly button and the enormity of it paralyzed me. The pain was minimal, more as if something dull had invaded my body and robbed all my senses. I gasped and my breath didn’t come. The world darkened as if running out of battery power. I saw what happened but couldn’t move. The knife went out of my body. I saw it because my head was frozen in a down position. Every nano-second burned in my retina clear as mid-day sunshine.

It was a long knife, at least eight inches with the blade curving slightly in waves on either side, the kind of thing they sell at martial arts stores. Blood came out of the wound and I tried to put my hand over it, but the knife flashed again, this time slightly higher. I could feel that wicked blade go in, the arteries and organs tearing. It felt as if the blade would come right out my back. In that split second, I knew my life ended, right there, on the boardwalk at Atlantic City on a Sunday morning.

I heard voices shouting, feet slapping the wood floor as the assailants ran. I managed to put both my hands over the gashes. It was the last physical act I could manage. Blood poured between my fingers. I sank to my knees and just fell to the floor. The world narrowed to a fast-closing tunnel.

But in that tiny space, within the few seconds left in my life, I saw the geek’s face. He looked in my eyes and said something I couldn’t understand, but I saw his hands move.

The geek gently moved my hands away and placed both of his over the gaping stab wounds in my abdomen. I felt a surge from his hands, like touching a low voltage wire. I saw him pressing down and my blood oozing between his fingers. I opened my mouth but no sound came out. The tunnel closed and I tumbled into a Stygian darkness.

**

The first thing I heard was urgent, sharp voices. I opened my eyes and saw people backing away from me then running.

I sat up and stood. Some things are so outrageous that you just can’t understand it. My mind stumbled at the events, trying to put it all together. I looked at my wrist. My watch was gone along with my wallet and gun. Down the boardwalk the people who’d been around me a few seconds ago, scavenging, reached the stairs and vanished. I looked at the position of the sun and it hadn’t changed. Not more than a few minutes had passed.

Fresh blood spattering rested on the cracked wood of the boardwalk, my blood, I realized. I looked down at my hands, sticky with gore. A crimson stain marked my tee shirt, punctuating the twin tears from the knife. I lifted my shirt and looked.

I was with the First Ranger battalion in Afghanistan in 02. I made it through okay until an RPG hit way too close and sent shrapnel tearing into my side. It was never life-threatening and healed nicely leaving a narrow white scar that never tanned – just like the new, twin scars on my abdomen. I felt fine. Better than I had in a long time. My assailants had vanished and so had the geek. I don’t know how long I stood there, trying to wrap my thoughts around what had happened. I’d been murdered, killed for sure, but something had brought me back.

I remembered the geek’s hands on my wounds, the electric feel of his touch. The mind rebels against the enormity of such unknowns and I stood paralyzed for a long time before starting the walk back to my hotel.

**

I paid off Sergei and didn’t go on the high-roller weekend. In fact I haven’t gambled since that Sunday morning. Instead, I’ve been searching, looking for the geek with that unimaginable power in his hands. That’s my entire life’s work now.

I had the blood on my tee shirt analyzed. It was my type. I sent a sample to a DNA lab. The report came back with a 99.9998% certainty that it was my blood. My physical exam came back perfect and the doctor said the scars on my abdomen were at least ten years old, and didn’t I remember them?

Yes I did, I remember them as if it was just a couple of weeks ago.