CAST A LONG SHADOW
BY
DONALD HARRY ROBERTS
1
I can’t say I didn’t deserve it. It meaning what happened a week ago when I turned on my boss with aspirations of getting out of the rackets with my skin intact and a few bucks to re-settle under a new name, new face and new job. Too bad it didn’t exactly work out the way I planned. The bastard took my wife and kid hostage before I could get them out and told me he would kill them if I testified. But I knew, even if I didn’t, he would kill us all. I was breaking away because my kid asked if I was a bad guy. I had to say yes but I could change. He asked if I could change by his birthday. I told him, “ Yah.”
But let me start from the first.
My job was simple. Mr. Gazalow would give me an envelope with 20 grand in it. There would be a name on the envelope. Mr. Gazalow wouldn’t tell me what to do. I just knew what had to be done and that I had seven days to do it unless there were mitigating circumstances making it necessary to do the job fast, or faster than fast. If I had the time, I made it look like an accident. If I had to move quickly the target just disappeared.
I only missed a deadline once. Mr. Gazalow never did ask me why. He simply invited me for a drink at his office and talked about how hot the local weather was and that if it was hot for him it would get hot for me.
In return, it was up to me to explain why things hadn’t been cooled down. In that one case, I told him. “There were two fronts to the weather pattern. I changed the course of one but another one came in to take its place and I haven’t identified the new pattern yet.”
Mr. Gazalow got it. He smiled and said he understood and suggested I wait out the storm until it was named…like any other hurricane. As it turned out Mr. Gazalow’s own confident, Bella was the hurricane. I took her out for dinner one night and lost her on a walk down by the river. I always figured she would show up somewhere, but she never did and went down in history under the missing persons' file…to stay. I got a bonus for that one.
2
I owed Gerry Gazalow everything, including my life. I would have been dead before my life even got started but he picked me up, cleaned me up, got me off drugs and taught me how to drink, responsibly, they call it now. He put me through school up to grade twelve then made me do time in the army where I learned how to kill, fast and efficiently. I spent seven years, mostly with special forces doing jobs that no one else could or would do. I walked away with a vocation and an honourable discharge. When I went back to Mr. Gazalow, he set me up in a nice joint and gave me a security job with a legit agency. Then one day he explained what my real job was. He called it Security Control. The world called it a lot of other things like Hitman, mechanic. The law called it murder or would have if they had ever caught me. But they never did and for twelve years I worked about 20 days a year. I rarely ever went to the security agency my tax form said I worked for.
I had four years behind me working for Mr. Gazalow when I met Marsha. Mr. Gazalow was all for it. It gave me the appearance of being the average joe on the street. Me and Marsha got married six months later and a year later she gave me a son, Randall/Randy. I was proud as punch that day, but that was also the day that I started rethinking my job. I was aware it wasn’t one I could talk about with my son over supper and I didn’t have anything in the security business to talk about. Of course, it was a few years before the problem really took hold, so things just kept going on like normal.
3
Randy was 11 when one-day things got tense. That was the day all the kids had to bring their fathers in to tell the class about their job. I had to play a very special game that day and talk a blue streak about how security companies had a few different departments and that I did mostly paperwork keeping client information in order but I couldn’t break client confidentiality.
I was lucky that day because I pulled off the façade, but I knew then someday it wouldn’t come out so easy.
But one day a year later something happened to make things really bad. Someone got a picture of me whacking this creep that was dipping into Gazalow’s till. It wasn’t a good shot of me so most people wouldn’t have noticed but Randy did when he saw it on one of his social sites.
I’ll never forget that night, those words and the sound in my son’s voice. “Hey, Dad. Look here. This guy looks just like you.”
That night a shadow was cast over my life. It was a long dark shadow the would never go away or even fade.
I managed to convince Randy it wasn’t me in the picture, just some bad guy who happened to look a bit like me and with the angle and the lighting a lot like me, but it wasn’t.
Then things went sour because I made the mistake of my life. I told Mr. Gazalow what happened.
“That’s not good Randy.” He said. “Someone saw you. You’ve lost your edge and now that kid of yours is a liability too.”
I sensed. I knew where the conversation was headed, and I knew that my life with Gazalow was over. I had to do something to protect my family even if I couldn’t save myself. I walked out of his office, went home and packed my wife and son off to her parents halfway across the country and told her never to come back. I was surprised when she understood and that she had known about what I did for most of our marriage, the photograph of me on the social page was only confirmation. She immediately packed up and disappeared. She didn’t go to her parents and didn’t tell me where she went. The only thing she said was, “We won’t surface until Uncle Gerry has dealt with you.”
I never knew she was connected to Gazalow.
I went from her straight to the police thinking Marsha and Randy Jr. would be long gone before Gazalow was any the wiser, but I was dead wrong. I wasn’t ten minutes out the door and he grabbed my wife and son.
4
Lenny, Gazalow’s personal messenger boy caught up to me as I was going into the police station. All he said was. “He has the woman and the boy and wants you to come for a drink.”
Gazalow was going to have me whacked and who knows what he had planned for my kid and wife. He was a cold-hearted bastard when it came down to it.
I didn’t try and go for my wife and kid. That wouldn’t work. I went for Gazalow and anyone else in his organization that got in my way.
I went to my hide where I kept all my gear and weapons. Not Even Gazalow knew where it was. I armed myself for a small war then headed for The Den, Gazalow’s Bar and office. But I was not certain how I felt. My wife had deceived me all the years of our marriage. I felt suddenly that she had married me to be her uncle’s eyes on me. Yet my son was not part of the deception and Gazalow had no right to endanger him.
My courage was high. My resolve certain, but I was only one man against a small army loyal to Gerry Gazalow, as loyal as I once was.
It was quiet outside the Den. Too quiet for Friday Night. There should have been a line up out the door. Instead, I saw two men with scatterguns. There was a sign in the window. Closed for renovations until further notice. But I knew Gazalow would be inside. There were lights on and I could see shadows through the curtains of the front windows.
I knew I couldn’t just charge in with guns blazing. I’d be shot down before I reached the door. Besides, if my kid was there a stray bullet could kill him. I didn’t give a damn about Marsha by then.
Suddenly the night exploded with sirens and the darkness lit up with flashing red, blue and white lights. The cops were everywhere.
“Randy. Please. Put down your guns. You can’t win.” It was Marsha. She was pleading. “You are sick Randy. Very sick. I never realized how sick you are until you told us to run and hide. But there is nothing to run and hide from, except yourself. All these years. You murdered all those people, for nothing.”
“Your Uncle. He ordered me to kill them. They were his enemies.” I screamed in anger. “Now you are turning on me. I have been loyal, but my son wants me to stop.”
“Randy. Please. Your son died at childbirth.” It was Gazalow talking now. And I am not Marsha’s Uncle. I am your doctor. Dr. Gazalow.”
Nothing was making sense, but I knew I was outgunned and did not want to die. Not this way. I let all my weapons fall to the ground and put my hands behind my head.
Lights flashed. People everywhere yelled out questions. Some yelled monster. “Shoot the murdering bastard.”
Then for one brief moment, I knew clarity. I saw the headlines in the newspapers. “Riverside Killer Strikes Again. Then the leading sentence of the last paper. “The count is now 22. Twenty-two victims over twenty-two years, all on the 15th of May.”
“May 15th. That was the day Randy Jr. was born and died.
Marsha came toward me. I looked up down at her when she drew close. The clarity grew clearer.
I looked her in the eyes and said. “I killed them all for you Marsha so no one would know it was you who killed our son.”
There was one weapon I had not thrown down. A knife tucked into my belt under my coat. I pulled it out and plunged it into her heart.
I woke in a room with padded walls and bound in a straight jacket. I was too weak to fight. I could feel the drugs rushing through my veins into my mind, subduing me.
Five people entered the room. Three were attendants. One was Dr. Gazalow and the other my wife Marsha. They were talking about me like I wasn’t even there.
“There is no hope. He is utterly lost in his delusion. “One minute he really believes he was a hitman for some gangland boss. The next he thinks he is this Riverside Killer. It’s all in his mind of course but there is nothing we can do to help him.”
“But he has never actually harmed anyone. Not even himself and most of the time he seems just fine.” Marsha argued in my favour.
“He is never just fine. Even his so-called normal life is part of the delusion. You and I are no more real than his other personalities.”
Suddenly the Doctor and my wife disappeared leaving only the three attendants. I was quickly dragged into a room and strapped to a table. My head was strapped down separately then cold steel pressed against my temples. Then the shock waves came.
And so… I can’t say I didn’t deserve it. It meaning what happened a week ago when I turned on my boss with aspirations of getting out of the rackets with my skin intact and a few bucks to re-settle under a new name, new face and new job. Too bad it didn’t exactly work out the way I planned. The bastard took my wife and kid hostage before I could get them out and told me he would kill them if I testified. But I knew, even if I didn’t, he would kill us all. I was breaking away because my kid asked if I was a bad guy. I had to say yes but I could change. He asked if I could change by his birthday. I told him, “Yah.”
But let me start from the first.