A Guardian of Innocents Read online

  Was the phantom stranger about to make an appearance? That was the last shit I needed right now.

  I made it to the bar, waited for one of the bartenders to notice me and ordered a mudslide. About seven feet or so away from me to my left were two men, probably in their forties, dressed in business suits.

  I didn’t like them. As soon as I saw them, I knew I didn’t like them. The one closest to me was portly, with beet-red lips. The other guy was taller with a little gray coming into his hair, just around his temples.

  “So what time are we supposed to be there?” the fatboy on the stool asked.

  The taller man, who chose to stand at the bar rather than sit, answered, “The official party starts at eight, but the show won’t start until after everyone else leaves, which probably won’t be until sometime after one.”

  “Is the show really like what the other guys say it is?”

  I saw images then, as the taller man thought back to a series of Halloween parties that had been going on steadily for several years. My mind’s eye was inundated with the pictures, sounds and memories of these parties—and what happened after each party was declared officially over.

  Their boss, Mr... I hadn’t caught his name yet, threw a Halloween party every year where only employees were invited. No families. Only a few select men from the company were allowed to come to the after-party after the last non-select employees had left.

  The after-parties had started off innocently enough. The boss, Mr. (Milford, Miller?) would buy some callgirls for the night and let his boys have at ‘em in any of the five guest bedrooms they chose. The boss would choose one for himself and retire to his master suite.

  “Depends on what you heard,” the tall guy answered, “You should see his place. Huge mansion. Got a real life secret chamber like he’s Batman or something.”

  His thoughts of that underground chamber triggered another flash of imagery from his psyche. He was scared.

  He was scared because he didn’t know what to expect this time. He didn’t know how far Mr. (Milton, yes, I think that’s it) would go this year.

  Each year, Mr. Milton’s after-parties had become more brazen, more outrageous and more illegal than the one prior. Three years ago, he had started a special show that would take place before his boys would choose their girls.

  In an underground theater below Milton’s house, two pairs of college-age looking kids stripped down live on stage and proceeded to fuck each other. Two guys, two girls, changing partners a few times. It seemed like nothing worse than live porn.

  That was three years ago.

  I pulled the address out of his thoughts, just as it crossed his mind. This is not an easy task. It’s a lot like hanging upside-down from a tree limb over a stream with a fast current, and trying to snatch up the right leaf as it comes floating by.

  “He’s got a theater in there with a special stage where the, uh, players perform.”

  The fat guy chuckled, “So just how special does this performance usually get?”

  “Well, let’s just say at the last one I thought for sure the cops were going to bust down the door and send us all to prison for a coupla years.”

  The bartender brought my drink over to me, and after I paid him, I pulled my beeper out of my pocket, pretending to scan through an invisible list of phone numbers. It gave me an excuse to hang out at the bar a few seconds longer.

  His paranoia about being arrested last Halloween had been well-founded. It seemed the kids at last year’s party were no longer college-age. On average, they were probably sixteen or seventeen. One girl he believed was probably fifteen, possibly as young as fourteen. She’d looked half-dead, like a walking coma patient. Her dark sleep-deprived eyelids shed only a few tears as she was raped on stage in front of a half dozen or so businessmen.

  “So what are you going as?” the fat guy asked.

  “Haven’t decided yet. You?”

  “Eh, I’ll probably just do something easy. Maybe I’ll dress like that killer from Scream.”

  “Oh, God. Last year there were three of those guys,” the tall guy scoffed.

  A hard, heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder and I jumped. I hadn’t felt anyone approaching me, but distractions this intense were rare.

  “What the fuck you doing up here, man?” Bo asked, beaming a crooked, smartass smile my way. Hidden meaning: I’m glad you came tonight. I was really worried about you.

  “Just getting myself a drink,” I answered.

  “A chocolate milkshake? Don’t be a pussy. You’re in a bar, man. Get a fuckin’ beer.”

  “It’s not a—“ I began defensively, but then I saw Bo knew exactly what kind of drink I was holding.

  “I know it’s a mudslide, dipshit, but it’s still a pussy drink.”

  I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the party. My mind kept drifting back to all the scenes I had witnessed. My outrage kept escalating every time I saw that girl’s face and I was becoming increasingly unpleasant company. But it was the first time in months my mind had been pre-occupied with something other than Desiree.

  The kids kept getting younger. First young adults, then the next year came teenagers and possibly one not even old enough to drive. How young would they be this year? That had been the tall guy’s main worry, one that was probably still turning his stomach. How young? I was curious to find out myself.

  * * *

  Bo’s prophecy was left unfulfilled. One of Nancy’s friends had been assigned the role of designated driver (Thank God) and I had not been forced to give her a ride home.

  The next day I looked up the address using a roadmap and a phone book. Jebediah Milton in Mansfield, Texas. This fucker was gonna die, but I didn’t want to just get him, I wanted every single man who silently stood by while a young girl was raped in front of them. The easiest and most efficient way of accomplishing this goal would be to locate them in the middle of their next assembly and crash the party. It was only eleven more days till Halloween, which meant I had a considerable amount of work to do.

  My heart fell as I drove past the place. The property was surrounded by a thick ivy-covered privacy wall about ten feet high. I drove by slowly, then turned around and crept by again. There was a tree whose limbs stretch towards the corner where the south wall met the east wall. I thought if I could shimmy up that tree, I could probably make it onto the concrete cap that ran along the top of the bricks, so long as I didn’t break a leg when I jumped down to the other side. And how I would escape after the deed was done was something I had yet to figure out.

  The center of the south wall held a tall wrought-iron gate whose two halves would open automatically once a code was punched in on a box you could drive up to. There was also a video camera perched up high on the wall next to the gate. It was aimed to see the driver of whatever vehicle pulled up. It seemed to glare at me from within its dirty off-white casing, though I stayed on the street and out of Milton’s driveway.

  It all seemed like too much of a challenge, too risky. I would have to put together a game plan worthy of both 007 and Houdini if I was going to make it out of this place alive and free of handcuffs.

  I focused on what I needed. The proper tools. A handgun wasn’t going to get the job done this time. Hell, two handguns probably wouldn’t even be enough. I needed something at least semi-automatic. I wasn’t even sure of the exact number of men I would have to take out.

  Surely, he’d have security at this party. God, I might have to kill some of them too. There wouldn’t be any way around it.

  Dogs! Oh shit, does he have attack dogs at his place? What the fuck was I planning to do if I ran into any of them? I could see myself jumping down onto Milton’s large, immaculate lawn and spraining my ankle from the fall, wherein I’d be greeted by a pack of smiling Dobermans, or perhaps some Rotties.

  I thought about all this as I drove away. This whole idea, this entire plan felt insane, scatterbrained and ill-conceived. I felt crazy even contemplating the different pieces of the
puzzle as they merged together in my mind, forming a grotesque menagerie of broken images.

  I drove with the stereo cranked while I fantasized about busting into that mansion and spraying the place with about ten-thousand bullets. But the more I dreamt about it, the more discouraged I became. I’m not some mercenary commando. If I was even able to get my hands on a machine gun, I probably wouldn’t even be able to figure out how to use it.

  What am I thinking even considering this? I need to make an anonymous call to the police. That’s what I fuckin’ need to do.

  But just as I was ready to puss out and opt for the easier alternative, I thought of all the nameless, faceless kids who get exploited everyday. Everyday on the web, and in various kiddie-porn rings that sell their material to select clientele.

  I thought of them and reminded myself I was one of them.

  The police would very likely fuck up this bust (this is assuming they even took my call seriously) and if they raided the place, what of it? The guilty would either use their high-priced lawyers to safely maneuver through the legal system or get out on parole for good behavior. If they were convicted at all, the men who stayed seated in the audience while the children were raped would most likely only get probation. They’d probably all say, ‘Gee, your honor, I couldn’t see clearly without my glasses on and I thought those kids had to be over eighteen because I’ve never known our beloved boss to do anything illegal. And I didn’t know there was actual penetration going on. I assumed it was all simulated!’

  Hell, they might not even spend a day in jail. The police would probably bargain with Milton to find out who supplied the kids to him. And come to think of it—

  I lit a cigarette as I got back onto the highway, then turned on my cd player. Rob Zombie began ranting about a car he’d named Dragula. I was very curious myself to know who Milton’s supplier was. Who was the pimp? Who was the piece of shit that rented those kids out?

  * * *

  Before I invested any money in this endeavor, I knew I had to do some research first. I needed some confirmation outside of myself that this plan had anything more than the most infinitesimal chance of working.

  I went to a large public library with only the vaguest ideas of what I was looking for. I thought that if maybe I spent the entire day looking through books of architecture I might be able to find the layout of a house at least similar to Milton’s.

  I had wasted about three hours of my time skimming through several books at a small table when I finally closed my eyes, sighed with exhaustion and covered my face with both hands. My elbows were propped on the table in front of one of the many useless books I’d removed from the shelves.

  “Mid-terms?” a voice asked.

  I looked up to see one of the library aides putting books back in their proper places from a metal rolling cart. The guy was damn hard to look at. His face was covered in acne, and pitted with the scars they left behind.

  “Me? Uh, wuh, nah. Umm... just studying.”

  “Really? Whatcha studying for? What class?”

  This guy was desperate for a friend. I deduced this without any psychic advantages. On top of his bad complexion, he was overweight and had the man-titties of a comic book loving computer nerd. His polo shirt clung to them like a damn wonderbra.

  “Oh, I’m not really studying for a class,” I conceded. I paused for a second, trying to conjure up a good lie, “I just wanna be a... go into real estate... you know, buying and selling.”

  He smiled, “Well, you’re not going to find any help in those books. You want to get on the internet. Surf the web.”

  “I don’t have a computer,” I replied. This was actually true.

  The guy squinted at me curiously, “You haven’t been to this library in awhile, have you? We’ve got four computers lined up in a row back there. All of ‘em have internet access. Free of charge, too. There’s safeguards, though. You can’t look up any of the bad stuff. Not that you’d want to or anything, but you know.”

  I felt stupid suddenly. It had never occurred to me that a public library would have free internet available to the masses, but then I hadn’t been in a library since ’94.

  In a hurry, I began scrambling all the books together with the intention of putting them all back so this nice, pitiable guy wouldn’t have to.

  Apparently he picked on my intentions, “I’ll put those back. Don’t worry about it!” According to his thoughts, the Dewey Decimal system became a real bitch when the patrons tried to put books back themselves.

  I headed for the back of the library and discovered, as foretold, four computers with black screens, each possessing a fluorescent color-changing ball bouncing around inside them. I hit the space bar to kill the screensaver and paused, not knowing where to start. I decided to run a search using the key word: houses.

  I eventually got smart and narrowed my search to real estate agents in Mansfield, Texas. If I could get a phone number, maybe I could chat with whoever sold the house to find out who designed Milton’s estate. Maybe I could call up the architect’s office to see if I could get a copy of the floor plan; maybe pose as an architectural student doing a paper based on the design of Milton’s estate.

  I felt high as I was doing this; all these ideas flowing into my head so quickly. These thoughts felt as if they weren’t my own, but maybe the demented imaginings of someone whispering in my ear. Then I found something that made my heart stop. This had to be fate. There was no other way to explain my luck.

  One website for a Mansfield real estate agent’s office had a little sidebar which listed a few of the so-called “hot” properties for sale. One of the bullets in this sidebar had Milton’s name and address next to it.

  TAKE A VIRTUAL TOUR!!!

  Of course, I couldn’t help but think, Holy shit!

  Accepting the offer, I was shown every room of his extravagant mansion (though the picture had that jerky, digital graininess prevalent to computers in the late 90’s) then led outside to peruse his twenty-stable horse barn and Olympic jumping course. I went through the whole damn thing three times and there was no mention anywhere of a secret chamber or underground theater.

  Frustrated, I printed out a copy of the floor plan and went home. I was glad at least that I’d found the house, if not the specific room I’d wanted.

  Once home, I studied the floor plan with a meticulous fervor, searching for any possible little thing that might reveal the entrance to this underground theater. I was starting to think maybe Milton had added this one room on after the house was built, but my gut was telling me the bastard just didn’t want a whole lot of people knowing about this room, therefore keeping it off the floor plan currently displayed for all the world to see and inspect on the internet. The virtual tour had referred to the basement as the wine cellar, but that didn’t mean the entrance to Milton’s private theater wasn’t somewhere inside.

  * * *

  My next step would have to be taken with incredible caution or else I would end up dead or in jail before Halloween ever arrived.

  I hadn’t seen Mark since high school and had no idea if he even lived with his dad still, but he was the only connection I had with a black market gun dealer, so I figured he was the best person to see first. I don’t know why I didn’t look up his number and call first; I guess my mind was just distracted by too much crap.

  I showed up at his front door after class and his dad opened it. I was surprised to see a look of recognition flash across his eyes. He remembered me. I couldn’t tell yet if that was good or bad. During my geology lecture class, I’d imagined and silently practiced what I was going to say, but had imagined saying it to Mark, and this sudden script rewrite was throwing me off.

  After a few seconds passed, Mark’s glossy-eyed dad said, “What?”

  “Um, is uh Mark here?”

  “Nah, he’s at work. Gets off uh-five.”

  “Oh... okay.”

  I turned to go and was willing to leave it at that, but then he asked, “Is t
here something I can help you with?”

  “You still in the business?” I inquired with a hushed voice.

  He snickered a little at that, “You don’t have to whisper. If you’re that nervous, come on inside.”

  As I followed him in, he asked, “So whatcha need this time?”

  I was still awestruck that this obvious pothead remembered our brief encounter over four and a half years ago.

  “Something a little more serious than a pistol,” I answered.

  Mark’s dad grunted, “Well, I only deal the small stuff. If you’re looking for an AK or something like that, I can’t help you. What I can do, though, is introduce you to a guy. Someone who’s into the heavier shit...”

  As I read his thoughts, I saw images of young guys in blue bandanas and sunglasses wearing wife-beater tank tops. The leader of this gang, Guillermo, had several tattoos and was reputed to have killed at least six men.

  “But I have to warn you—“ he began.

  “Are you sure you don’t have something more rapid-fire than a handgun?” I interrupted him out of desperation.

  Mark’s dad sat down on his worn-out sofa and looked up at me, considering. He pulled a quarter bag from one pants pockets and a pack of Zig-Zag papers from the other, and leaned forward to roll a joint on his coffee table.

  “I might have something that would interest you, kid, but I seriously doubt you can afford it.”

  Hope began to flutter in the pit of my stomach again, “Don’t worry about that. Whudduya got?”

  He grunted. “Before we get into that, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to perform the ritual again.”

  Stripping down wasn’t nearly as difficult or embarrassing as it had been the last time. Visually assured that I wasn’t bugged, he walked into the master bedroom and locked the door behind him. I could hear him rummaging around in his closet, then some hollow thuds echoed from underneath the trailer floor. I probed his thoughts and saw where he had cut out a special niche, a secret cubby-hole in the bottom of the closet wall behind some boxes of old crap.