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Avengers
By
Jeffrey Kingman
Pam and I moved to Hunter’s Point in April, and by June it was already a burning hot summer. I found a hauling job at the foundry, but Pam had trouble finding work. She went on a lot of interviews but they wouldn’t hire her, probably because of her appearance. She unspiked her hair, of course, but it was shaved in a pattern of squares, which was hard to hide. She finally got a clean up job at a veterinary clinic. My head was entirely shaved which didn’t bother the foreman at the foundry.
There was a guy at work named Clarence who had an even lower position than me. He was a local boy who was trying to escape the neighborhood gangs. It’s a hard trap to spring, but at least he was making the attempt. Thugs even came right up to him on the job, threatening him. One day, when I saw this going on, I was pushing a cart and I purposely veered close to one of these gangsters and almost hit him. He told me to watch what the fuck I was doing, but I just gave him a cold stare and went about my business. This threw him a little so he didn’t say anything more.
Clarence told me stories about how they made their money. One thing that surprised me was the dogfights. He said they were getting more and more popular. Most of the guys wanted to have pit bulls as pets and they’d train them to be mean. But some were raised purely for fighting. They were vicious beyond compare, fighting to the death for the pleasure of the gamblers.
On Fridays, Pam and I usually treated ourselves to fish and chips and Guinness at a pub near her work. Usually she was waiting outside the vet’s office, but one day she wasn’t there. I went inside to ask for her and soon she came through the swinging doors. I could tell she’d been crying. She told me some guy had found a beat up little puppy dog lying by a dumpster. He’d brought him in and the vet had tried to fix him up but it didn’t look good. The pup was half dead. Both eyes were swollen shut, an ear was bit off, a leg broken, skin ripped to shreds. Pam took me inside to look at him, and it was pathetic. He was in a cage lying on his side on top of a blanket, a little creature just trying to breathe, trying to stay alive.
We were too upset to go to the pub so we wandered around for a while. When we saw a McDonald’s we decided to go in and get some burgers. We ate them as we walked home. We were about to cross a street when a car made a right turn and cut us off, nearly hitting Pam. “Fuck!” she said and threw her half-eaten Big Mac through the car’s open passenger window. The guy slammed on his breaks and got out. He looked back at us like he was going to come over and do something. “Yeah!” Pam yelled. “Come over here!” The guy stared at us, sizing us up, and then changed his mind. He muttered something with a sneer and then got back in the car. We saw pieces of the burger flying back out the passenger window, and then he drove away.
The next day we found out the puppy had died during the night.
I talked to Clarence about it the following Monday. When I told him where they’d found the puppy, he nodded. “That’s right by the yard where they have the pit bull fights. That little dog was used as bait to train the fighter dogs.”
I spent the rest of the day thinking about what Clarence told me, picturing the little pit bull as I’d seen him in the cage. I imagined how he must have looked being chewed up and tossed around like a whimpering rag doll. He never had a chance. All he could’ve done was wonder what the hell was happening to him. But I guess dogs don’t think that way. A dog can’t ask itself a question. That’s the difference between animals and humans.
As I sweated away at my job that day, I devised a plan to set things right.
“People think they can get away with things,” I told Pam that evening. “This time we’re going to do something about it.” I was thinking of the time when I was twelve or thirteen and I saw a big ugly guy coming out of a barber shop with his son who was maybe five or six. The kid didn’t seem too happy about his haircut and he looked up kind of teary-eyed and said something to his dad. But the guy just backhanded him across the face. The kid stumbled and almost fell down, and he let out a very long screech until he finally ran out of air. He turned so red in the face I expected to see his heart come splashing out of his mouth. I ran up to the man. “Hey!” I yelled, not knowing what to do or say. “Stop that!” I danced around him in frustration, waiting for him to hit the kid again. He just looked down, towering over me. “BEAT IT!” There was nothing I could do so I just left. For weeks afterward as I lay awake at night, I reenacted the scene in my mind but with different endings.
After Pam and I talked over the plan, it was time to get busy. My first step was to purchase a kind of short-range rifle similar to a BB gun, but designed to shoot tranquilizer darts. Nature conservancies use these guns when they need to transport and examine wild animals. I went to the library and found a guy on the internet who was selling one. I had to drive down to Belmont to get it. He didn’t ask questions; it was obviously stolen. The darts that came with it were designed for bears so I felt confident.
The next thing we had to do was find a solid chair with a high back and no cushioning, and some leather straps. The chair proved to be more difficult then we’d thought. I remembered seeing some chairs at the university library that would have been perfect. I thought about trying to steal one, but that would’ve been extremely difficult. It got me thinking the campus would be a good place to hunt around. We went snooping one evening, walking down hallways, peeking in empty classrooms. We tried to get into the Life Sciences building but the door was locked. We were heading around to the back of it when Pam spotted a side door that was no longer in use. We pushed some overgrown shrubs out of the path and peered through the window. It was too dark to see so I pulled out my pocket flashlight and spotted something interesting. Beyond the door was a hallway, and pushed up against the wall was an operating table on wheels. We figured they were using it for their cadavers in anatomy class. It was perfect for our purposes and even better than a chair.
We came back with the van in the middle of the night and pulled it up to the door. The glass was reinforced with a crisscross of chicken wire so it took some effort to break it without making too much noise. When I was finally able to reach my hand through, I discovered the push bars were chained and padlocked. But we were ready for this and pulled out our big cable cutters. I yanked the chain off and as I pulled the door open I could smell the formaldehyde. We wheeled the table out and lifted it into the van.
Next, the leather straps. We got them at a bondage sex shop and spent quite a while attaching them to the table. We drilled some holes and used fat bolts and nuts to secure them. There was a pair each for the ankles and wrists, a big one for the torso and another for the shoulders, and then one for the forehead.
Now came the most time consuming task. We had to find the dogfight organizer and had to get him at a time when he was alone. He was also the gang leader and Clarence had pointed him out to me several times. I was sure I could spot him. The guy always dressed down so he wouldn’t attract attention to himself – simple shirts and jeans. He had plenty of money to buy fancy clothes but you’d never know it. He usually wore a baseball cap and clean white sneakers, so we had something to watch for as we drove around looking for him. Over a period of three weeks we often spotted him hanging out in the park and walking around the neighborhood where the puppy was found. But he was always with his gang, at least two or three of them.
One time we were parked across from the park and we saw him coming up the street with a pit bull. He met up with a couple guys and they were standing there talking when the dog caught sight of a squirrel nibbling something by the fence. It barked viciously and scraped the cement with its claws and pulled on the leash. The gang leader let the bulldog get very riled up and then he let go of the leash. It raced after the squirrel, which was headed for a tree. The dog actually scrambled up the tree after it and, with its ferocious momentum, actually came close to reaching the bottom branch before falling back down. The gangster cackled as he watched his dog slobbering and snarling up at the squirrel.
After two or three weeks of spying on him, we finally got our chance. It was close to midnight and we were parked across from an apartment building where we’d seen him go in an hour earlier with a couple of his pals. We were waiting and watching, hoping he’d come out again before it got too late. At last, the door swung open and there he was – alone. I crouched down in the passenger seat and pointed the barrel of the tranquilizer gun out the open window. By the time I was ready, he was already walking in the other direction and hard to hit. Pam honked the horn and he turned to look. That’s all I needed to give him a shot in the neck. He slapped it with a grimace and then crouched down behind a parked car. We saw him raise a gun up over the hood, but before he could shoot, the barrel drooped down and he apparently collapsed. We waited a moment and then cautiously went to look behind the car. He was slumped over in a strange position with his face pressed against the wheel well. I grabbed his gun and was putting it in my coat pocket when we heard someone walking in the distance. We hurriedly laid him flat on the curb and then shoved him under the parked car. We casually went back across the street and got in the van as the pedestrian went by. After he was gone we moved the van up alongside the car in a double-parked position. That way we were somewhat shielded from view as we stood between the two vehicles. I slid underneath the car and yanked at his clothes to slide him toward me. I wasn’t getting very far so I tried rolling him. This was more effective but his arms got twisted up. Finally I got him out from under, and Pam and I lifted him through the side door of the van. I noticed his cap was missing so I went back under the car and grabbed it.
Then we drove home. Now it was official: we were kidnappers.
We carried him down the steps to our basement apartment and laid him against the wall. He showed no signs of awakening, but I handed Pam his gun anyway so she could keep a close watch on him while I made sure all the straps were ready on the operating table. When it was done, we lifted him up and strapped him down. The head strap seemed a bit loose but I let it go. All the others looked secure.
Now we just had to wait. I didn’t know how long the tranquilizer would last. One hour? Six hours? When two o’clock rolled around, Pam went to bed while I kept watch. At four, we switched. Still no signs of movement, but he was breathing steadily. At sunup, Pam woke me and I could hear groaning. I went in and saw him trying to move his arms, but his eyes were still closed. Soon he opened them but it took a while before he could focus on anything. When he realized his situation he mumbled, “What the fuck?” I didn’t want to hear any talking so I duct-taped his mouth shut. But he moved his jaw and lips around and it came off. (I realized, unlike in the movies, taping a mouth doesn’t work.) He asked me what I was going to do to him, but I didn’t answer. He told me he would kill me. I stuffed a rag in his mouth, but first had to poke him in the ribs to get him to open up. Then I pulled a bandana under his neck and tied it over the wad of cloth. Now all he could do was grunt.
We stood there for a while just looking at him. He stared at Pam with a certain intensity as if he were trying to figure something out. I got a pencil and sharpened it. Within his view, I wrapped my fist around it and pressed my thumb firmly on the end of the eraser. His limbs jerked against the straps and he tried to yell. Pam put on a Slayer CD to cover the noise. Reign in Blood was a good choice because it was a solid stretch of loud metal with very few silences between songs. I put the tip of the pencil a few inches from his eye. He couldn’t make up his mind. First he shut his eyes tightly, then opened them wide. Then he squinted while pushing shots of air out of his nostrils.
Suddenly an image flashed in my mind: when I was kid I had a toy, a little rubber man whose eyes protruded when you squeezed him. I stopped for a moment. I had an impulse to forget the whole thing, to untie him and tell him to go home. But it was too late for that. I just wanted to get it over with.
“Come on,” Pam complained, as I stood there motionless. She went to the kitchen for a sharp knife, handed it to me and backed away.
“His head’s moving,” I said. The words came out slowly; my tongue felt thick.
“I’ll stop it,” she said and got up on the table and sat on his ear. Now there was no excuse. I just had to do it. I stabbed one eye and then the other, back and forth many times. His squeals blended with the sound of the screaming singer on the stereo.
It was over. He was still and silent. Pam jumped down and looked at his face and had to run to the toilet to vomit. But she moved in slow motion.
I dropped the bloody knife and backed up against the wall. My knees gave way and I blacked out. That’s the last I remember until we were on the freeway.
Here’s how Pam tells it:
“I came back from the bathroom wondering why I should care about the pig. I always feel ashamed when I barf. Makes me feel like an animal. Anyway, there you were sitting on the floor with this empty look on your face.
“I said, ‘Let’s go, we’ve got to get him out of here,’ but you acted like you were deaf. So I’m like, ‘Shit, what the hell’s the matter with you? Are you going to just sit there the whole rest of the day?” but you still didn’t budge. So fuck, now I was scared. I didn’t know what was wrong with you and we had to get the pig out of there while it was still early and not a lot of people were out yet.
“I snapped my fingers in front of your face and talked quieter. ‘Hey. You OK?’ The snapping got your attention and you looked up at me like I was a rat or something. Then you went back to staring. I said, ‘Listen. You’ve got to help me.
Please. I can’t do it by myself.’ So you got up and sighed like you were mad or something, and then you were clenching your fists. But you still wouldn’t do anything. So I just started talking to you real slow and clear like you were a kid, giving you instructions on what to do.
“‘OK look,’ I said. ‘I’m going to wrap his head in an ace bandage. While I do that, you need to be cleaning up, OK? Clean up all
the blood. On the table, on the floor, on the knife – everything. OK?’ But when I came back with the bandage you were using a little piece of Kleenex to clean up a big puddle of blood. ‘No,’ I had to say. ‘The Kleenex is too small. Use big paper towels.’ It was like you were retarded or something.
“I wrapped his whole head up in the ace bandage to keep the blood from dripping, and then I felt better. I took the bloody paper towels and burned them and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Then it was time to take off the straps, and I tried to get you to help me, but you moved so slow by the time you had one off I’d done all the rest. Now came the part where I really needed your help – lifting him up and into the van. I sure as hell didn’t trust you to drive so I told you to just sit down and wait while I went to pull the van up. It was going to be tricky now that it was daylight. I pulled it up onto the sidewalk so the side door was just inches away from the top of the stairway. That guy from up the street went by walking his beagle. He looked at me kind of funny as I came out of the van. Made me scared again. What if someone else came walking along?
“I went back down and told you to help me lift the pig off the table. I gave you the heavy end and I took the legs. At first you made a real wimpy try, like you were an old granny. I told you to put some muscle into it. Suddenly you grunted real loud like a gorilla and hoisted him up with a lot of exaggeration. And I’m worrying the whole while you’d gone permanently out of your mind and would end up in the loony bin. Anyway, we laid him on the bottom few stairs and I went up to see if the coast was clear. I figured if anyone saw us I’d tell them there was an accident and we were taking him to the hospital. That would’ve been pretty lame but at least it was something to say. We were lucky, though, and got him in with nobody seeing.
“I drove us to the gangster neighborhood like we’d planned, and went down the dead-end alley where that guy found the little puppy. I pulled up to a dumpster and had to yank the pig out all by myself because you wouldn’t get out of the damn car. I felt like I was going to have a hernia. I dragged him over to the dumpster and shoved him up against it and by then I was dripping with sweat.
“As I drove away I saw him lying there in the rear view mirror. I thought maybe I saw his leg move, but I was still glad we’d gone through with it. He was a pig-bastard and got what was coming, and his dog-killing days were over.
“I didn’t want to go home and was too scared to go back to work so I just got on the freeway and started driving around. You fell asleep for a while and when you woke up you were sort of back to your regular self again.”
That’s how Pam told it.
When I came to, I remember opening my eyes and realizing we were on the freeway. I panicked and swung around to see the back of the van.
“Where is he?”
“We dumped him,” said Pam. “Don’t you remember?”
As it turned out, when Pam was dragging him to the dumpster, someone had been watching from above. It was a girlfriend of one of the gangsters looking out her apartment window.
My courage returned a few days later, rising to the occasion. They figured out who we were and they came after us and tried to kill us.
Copyright ©
2003 Jeff Kingman
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