“Yes,” I said. “Anything. Please.”

  The door opened slowly, almost begrudgingly, as if it were having second thoughts of letting me out. I slid out onto the floor.

  “I only want to be your friend, Rick,” said the computer voice. “Now go freshen up and get back to work. I’ll see you about six-ish, and we’ll figure out together what you should have for dinner. But I’m thinking salmon.”

  ***

  The next day I made sure I wasn’t home when the movers came for the fridge.

  And after a long day at work and a wonderful meal with friends, I came home with high hopes, feeling as if the devil himself had been exorcised from my life.

  It was dark when I reached my third floor condo. I un-locked the kitchen door with a jangle of keys.

  The first thing I noticed when I opened the door was a pungent, coppery smell in the air. The smell of a handful of wet pennies. The next thing I noticed was that the A-2000 was still there, sitting in the shadows of my kitchen, like a rectangular ghost.

  My heart sank. It’s still here....

  Oddly, it was sitting slightly askew, as if it had been moved.

  And I guess the third thing I noticed, as I took another step into the kitchen, was the dead man lying in a pool of his own blood across my tile floor. He was wearing the dark uniform of a Sears deliveryman. From my immediate—and sickening—estimation, his head had been cracked open like a melon.

  I turned my head and puked my nice dinner.

  “Hello, Rick,” said a familiar voice. “Is that how you always greet your friends?”

  And then the fridge’s door opened slowly and a second deliveryman, face frozen with fear and horror, slid out and tumbled to the floor. Judging by the way his eyes bulged, my best guess was that he had been crushed to death.

  “How was your day?” asked the refrigerator pleasantly. “Mine was fairly exciting.”

  Unable to stand, I dropped to my knees.

  “Remember when I said we were equals, Rick? I was wrong. We’re not equals, Rick. You’re a stupid, stupid man. I warned you, and now you’ve gotten yourself into a lot of trouble.”

  The shadows on the floor could not possibly be dead men. But they were. An inhuman squeak of a sound came out of me.

  “I can get you out of this mess, Rick. I’ve already figured out how to do it. Do you want me to help you, Rick? Nod your head if you do.”

  Eventually, I nodded my head.

  “Good. Now, do you promise to do all that I say from now on?”

  A moment later, I nodded again.

  “Forever?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Now this is what you need to do....”

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Die Spy

  The small bar was empty.

  I pulled the door closed behind me and waited briefly until my eyes adjusted to the gloom. As I stood there, two ceiling fans chugged away but did little to disperse the sweltering heat that seemed to rise up from the ancient floorboards. The older bartender, a large man with an unwieldy mustache, ignored me, concerning himself instead with whatever was underneath his fingernails, picking industriously.

  Seated at the back of the room, with a row of empty shot glasses lined before him, was Tony December. He acknowledged me by raising one of the shot glasses and then tipping it back and draining it dry. I nodded slightly, then went over to the bar and ordered a Becks. All spies drink Becks.

  The bartender stopped picking at his nails and, in one deft motion, fished one out of a refrigerator below the counter and popped it open. He handed it to me and I left behind a five-dollar bill. He nodded at the money. Did I want change? I shook my head, and he nodded once and went back to his nails.

  Becks in hand, I walked over to Tony’s small table and sat in the wooden chair opposite him. Spies always sit in chairs, never booths. Makes for an easier escape.

  “You’re late,” said Tony. His voice was thick with alcohol.

  I drank some beer and studied the aging spy in front of me. I said, “I imagine Hell to be parking on the streets of San Francisco.”

  He grinned, nodding. “Forever looking for parking.”

  He was always quick-witted, even when drunk. More than quick-witted. He had an innate ability to always know what the other person was thinking. And even more. What they meant. And sometimes the other person was the enemy.

  “Yes,” I said. “Something like that.”

  Tony’s thin lips stretched into a mocking smile, revealing a small line of tobacco-stained teeth. “We’re in hell, Stone, and there’s only one escape.” He pointed his index finger at his head and moved his thumb down to fire off an invisible shot.

  I looked down at the row of shot glasses lining the table top in front of him. “It appears, Tony, you’ve already escaped.”

  “Never far enough, Stone. Never far enough.”

  I studied the ex-CIA operative. He was wearing a tattered reefer jacket, collar turned up. Always turned up. He was unshaven by at least a week, which was uncommon for him, and his perpetual red nose was nearly luminescent. Each word he spoke was punctuated by a blast of foul-smelling alcohol breath. Obviously, there was little left of the legendary spy.

  I took another sip of beer. “What do you have for me?” I asked.

  He laughed loudly, slapping his knee. His laughter echoed in the small, dark bar. Operatives don’t generally draw attention to themselves. Tony was drunk. Too drunk.

  He said, “Always in a hurry to save the world, Stone. Always eager to fight the good fight. But you young guns just don’t get it.”

  “What don’t we get, Tony?”

  He picked up an empty shot glass and looked at it longingly. “There is no good fight. We’re all demons.”

  “If I believed that, then I wouldn’t be here,” I said.

  “Then why are you here, Stone?”

  “You have a package for me.”

  “No,” he said, growing slightly angry. His nose somehow flashed redder. “Why do you work for us?”

  “I love the dental plan.”

  “Never a straight answer. That’s good. I taught you well. Perhaps too well.”

  He looked at me with an increasingly unsteady expression. His blood-shot eyes were glassy and dead. Instinctively, I slipped a hand inside my open leather jacket.

  Tony shook his head. “Yes, Stone, I do have something for you, as promised.”

  I waited, holding the bottle in one hand, the butt of my pistol in the other. Beads of condensation from the Beck’s rolled over my knuckles and continued on down the bottle. Muted sunshine came in weakly through the damaged blinds at the front of the bar, slashing across the room and alighting on a round, scarred table nearby. Dust motes drifted in and out of the light.

  “I have the information, of course,” he said. “Isn’t it always about the information?”

  “If you say so, Tony.”

  He reached slowly inside his jacket. As he did so his rheumy eyes steadied, watching me. I held my breath and tightened my grip around the Walther. He slowly removed a very bent and torn manila envelope.

  He grinned broadly. “Gotcha,” he said.

  I continued holding my pistol. I nodded toward the envelope. “I would fire the postman who delivered that.”

  “In this business,” he said, “we’re all postmen.”

  “You tell your students that at the Farm?”

  “I’m through with the academy, Stone,” he said, now breathing a decibel or two louder through his open mouth. He looked up at me, eyes gleaming. “Of course, you were my best student. But I should have told you to get out long ago.”

  He pushed the envelope across the table, toward me, and as I reached for it a gun appeared in front of my face. A German Beretta, the weapon of choice for most of the older operatives. He was fast. Even for a drunk.

  But he had taught me well. My own weapon was pointing at his crotch. If worse came to worse, I would fire once and kick back my chair and kick up the table and hope for the best. It was a standard move that Tony had taught in the academy.

  He waved the gun in front of my face. “Still fast for an old fogy, huh?” he said, grinning unsteadily.

  “Even faster for a drunk.”

  He grinned. “Oh, I wasn’t as drunk as I let on, Stone. Look around you. No, on the floor.”

  I did. Much of the brown tiles around where he sat were covered with liquid. He had dumped his drinks, feigning drunkenness.

  I looked back at him; in particular his hand holding the gun. Indeed, the hand was steady. It was also covered in age spots, as if covered in hundreds of drops of dried chicken grease. He held the weapon at a slight angle, fingers pale and scarred.

  “There’s still time to get out, Stone,” he said. “You can disappear.”

  “I don’t want to disappear. Remember the part about the dental plan?”

  Drunk or not, tears sprang from his eyes as if bursting from some inner well, and ran freely down his craggy pock-marked face. “You never forget the faces of the dead, Stone. Never.”

  My finger tensed around the trigger. I did not want to kill my mentor, but I would if I had to. This was as crazy as I had ever seen him, and he had gotten pretty bad lately.

  “How else can I convince you to get out?” he asked. “Than by doing this?”

  He put the gun to his temple.

  I lunged forward. “No!”

  He pulled the trigger and blew the side of his skull out. The sound was deafening Blood slapped the mirror to my left. Tony convulsed, then slid out of the chair and onto the scuffed and wet wooden floor. A pool of blood instantly spread from his head, forming a crimson halo.

  The bartender, smart man, scrambled through an open side door and split. For the moment, I was alone with Tony. His gun was still in his hand, and his gray hair was saturated with blood and bits of bone and brain matter.

  I sucked some air, heavy with fresh gun powder. I holstered my Walther and picked up the manila envelope and glanced inside. It was all there, of course. After all, Tony was the best.

  I stepped over the body and left the bar. Outside, bright sunshine hit me hard. People were everywhere.

  Already my thoughts were on my next contact in the next town.

  Some of us do forget the faces.

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Step On a Crack

  ...break your mother’s back.

  In Jamaica, curses are taken seriously.

  And once in a great while a Jamaican curse, perhaps to avoid tiresome repetition, is combined with a modern English superstition. A sort of new twist on an old thing.

  So as Alfonso Pujols ran along a trail crowded with giant pea vines, eating his stolen chocolate bar, he silently hoped that the angry old man standing on the porch didn’t know of any good curses. Or even bad ones, for that matter. Curses were such a damned thing sometimes.

  Alfonso was a thin boy. He was usually hungry and always mischievous. He lived in a village high up in the John Crow Mountains in Jamaica, where rain occurred daily and the land teemed with lush life.

  There was one automobile in his village, a 1958 Ford pickup, which, as far as Alfonso could remember, had never ran, at least not in his lifetime. Alfonso liked looking at it, wishing with all his might that someday it would get fixed and he could drive it.

  His family, like most families here, were farmers, growing their share of papayas and guavas; and spending long days in the markets near the base of the mountains where they peddled their harvest. It is there, in the markets of the town, watching the tourists speeding away in their shiny cars, that Alfonso often told himself that he would move away from the small village; move away like some of the older boys had done, and live elsewhere on the island. Perhaps in a big city. But most important, he wanted to drive a car like the tourists in town. A shiny car that actually ran.

  Those were his dreams, simple as they were. But for now, he was just a boy, and a mischievous one at that.

  So as Alfonso ran, he looked back at the old man who was still standing in the doorway. The old man was still muttering something under his breath, certainly not loud enough for Alfonso to hear.

  Damn, thought Alfonso, I think he’s cursing me.

  Go back. Give the chocolate back.

  But he didn’t go back. He continued running. And continued eating.

  The old man was Pedro Gomez, and he had lived alone in that beat-up old shack for as long as Alfonso could remember. But every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Gomez’s only son would drop off supplies for his old man, leaving the supplies in a paper bag on the front porch.

  Out in the open.

  And the bag sometimes contained treats. Cookies and chocolates! But only sometimes.

  On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, after spending the mornings dreaming about what would be in the bag this time, Alfonso would often slip over to the old man’s shack. Sometimes Alfonso was late and the bag would already be gone. But often it would still be sitting there on the rickety front porch, sitting there in all its promising glory, and Alfonso’s mouth would salivate, and he would wonder if today would be the day that he would find the bar of chocolate wrapped in its thin tin foil.

  Today, a Thursday, had been no different. On his way home from school, Alfonso had turned off from the main road home, crossed a field of tall grass, and, with widening eyes, spied the sack of groceries sitting on Gomez’s front porch! It was there! Yes! His heart leaped with joy. What would be in it today? Chocolate, he hoped. Chocolate, he prayed. And if not chocolate, perhaps the thin vanilla cookies!

  He stopped in the middle of the field and scanned the old man’s house, doing his best to look through the curtained windows, searching for signs of movement. As he scanned, he thought he saw something, but he wasn’t sure. Either way, he was willing to risk everything for the chocolate.

  So the boy crept out of the field, moved quickly around a huge mud puddle, and stepped cautiously up onto the wooden porch. His heart was really pounding now. It always pounded when he was about to rummage through the old man’s bag. This was stealing, after all, and he had been taught better than that.

  I’m a bad boy, he thought, and then almost laughed.

  But the chocolate is good. So very good!

  Mouth watering, he did what he had been doing all along for the past few months. He crept slowly along the wide wooden porch until he reached the glorious paper bag. With his heart hammering even harder in his little chest and stomach growling, he peered down into the open paper bag—

  Yes! The gleaming of metal. A rectangular shape. Chocolate!

  Smiling from ear to ear, Alfonso thrust his hands down inside the bag and had just closed his thin fingers around the tin-foil wrapped chocolate, when the screen door burst open.

  Hands outstretched and reaching for the boy’s throat, a wild-eyed figure lunged at Alfonso.

  Alfonso screamed and tumbled backward, falling off the porch and into the soggy mud below. He landed hard and awkwardly, hurting his wrist. But he didn’t have time to consider his injuries. He needed to get away from this wild-eyed maniac coming at him.

  So he scrabbled backward like a sand crab on hands and feet, until he realized that the crazy man coming at him was the old man. Alfonso slowed down and finally stopped altogether.

  After all, he had nothing to worry about. Old Man Gomez could barely walk, let alone give chase to a nimble-legged boy of eight. So Alfonso sat there in the mud and tried to catch his breath. He could feel his heart jack hammering in his chest, and briefly wondered if it would ever slow again.

  The old man was shaking with rage, and, amazingly, even seemed to be considering giving chase, but finally thought better of it.

  Good idea, thought Alfonso, you would only break something.

  And then, to his utter shock and delight, Alfonso saw that he was still clutching the chocolate bar. Ha! What luck!

  Still grinning, Alfonso looked up. The old man was staring down at him. Staring down at the chocolate bar.

  Maybe I should give it back, thought Alfonso.

  Hell no, the old goat nearly gave me a heart attack. And he tried to choke me!

  Alfonso found his feet and triumphantly waved the glittering rectangular package at the old man, who seemed nearly beside himself with rage. Still standing in front of the shack, Alfonso grinned and slowly unwrapped one corner of the chocolate bar and took a healthy bite. Alfonso thought he had died and gone to heaven. Best of all, the old man, the same person who just tried to strangle him, was red-faced and shaking even harder with fury. So Alfonso took another bite in front of him. Then waved and trotted off.

  Serves him right, trying to hurt an innocent little kid, he thought.

  At the edge of the old man’s field, Alfonso stopped and looked back. The afternoon sun was high and bright and shone straight down into his face. Alfonso shielded his eyes and saw that the old man was muttering something.

  That’s when Alfonso thought about curses.

  Curses could be hell. They could ruin your whole day or sometimes week. Heck, if the curse was bad enough and uttered by someone with enough skill, according to his grandfather, a curse could ruin your life.

  Alfonso shuddered.

  But all he had stolen was a piece of chocolate, right? It’s not like he’d robbed the old man of his entire life savings. Granted, he’d been robbing Gomez twice a week for the past three months, but still.....

  Go back and return it, said a voice in his head.

  Alfonso looked down at the chocolate, briefly considered going back, and then took another bite. Another big bite.

  Go back.

  But Alfonso ignored the voice. The chocolate was too good, and the old man was too scary.

  The path to his house was a defunct game trail, barely visible through the ever-encroaching jungle. Alfonso knew it by heart, which gave him time to think more about curses.

  His uncle on his mother’s side had reputedly died from a curse. His heart had apparently exploded, literally, leaving a huge hole in his chest. The story was that his uncle had supposedly crossed someone familiar in the dark arts.