Читать книгу The Book Of Schemes - Marcus Calvert - Страница 8

Tom Mayner awoke to the insistent chiming of his doorbell at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. At thirty-nine, the chubby millionaire glared at his alarm clock and wondered who the hell was bothering them this early. His trophy wife, Sarah, slept through the noise with little difficulty. Tom scowled in his yellow silk pajamas as he threw on his red silk bathrobe, slid into his black leather slippers, and headed for the door. He stormed across the second floor of his expansive suburban home, past the rooms of his children (Ron and Marie), and went down a flight of stairs. The doorbell rang with every other step. Tom reached the front door and flung it open.

“What?!” Tom yelled, red-faced.

Vivian Ducher stood outside, with a faint grin on her face.

A year older than Tom, she was a half-head taller and skinny enough to vaguely resemble Olive Oyl, from the Popeye cartoons of old. Her black hair was streaked with some strands of gray and was combed back into a long ponytail which ran halfway down her back. She wore a pink, flower-patterned dress and had a an unattractive, long-nosed face. Behind her was his brand-new gray Porsche, which was parked in the long driveway of his half-million-dollar house.

Tom narrowed his eyes with recognition.

“‘Stuttering Storky?!‘“ Tom blurted out with a shocked smile. “Is that you?”

Vivian’s eyes narrowed for a brief moment of ire.

“Stuttering Storky” was a title slapped on Vivian during her high school days. Being tall, skinny, and ugly was bad enough. But her heavy stutter had made her life hell. The popular students – like Tom – relentlessly tormented her, even after she tried to kill herself with a razor during her sophomore year. Halfway through her senior year, Vivian’s parents pulled her from the school and Tom had seen her since.

“Actually,” she replied, without the stutter, “my name is Vivian.”

She held out her right hand with a forced smile.

“Good to see you again, Tom.”

Out of basic politeness, Tom shook Vivian’s hand. As he did, a strong burning sensation passed through his arm, as if he had placed his hand on a hot stove. Tom jumped back and looked down at his hand with surprise and concern. But his skin was unmarked and the pain was gone.

“What do you want?!” Tom asked with annoyance, his attention still on his hand.

“I just wanted to make sure you were all okay,” Vivian lied with a sudden, eerie smile. “I heard you had run into a patch of bad luck.”

“Me? Run into bad luck?” Tom chuckled as he looked at her. “I own the fifth largest accounting firm in the state. I’ve got a beautiful wife and two awesome kids. And that Porsche behind you is mine. Aside from my Benz being in the shop, my luck’s pretty damned good right now.”

“Really?” Vivian frowned. “I heard that you were about to be indicted for laundering money for some Panamanian drug cartel.”

Tom chuckled and said, “I don’t have any clients out of Panama!”

“You don’t say?” Vivian asked. “That’s strange. I heard that you did. And that you were skimming money off the top.”

Tom was still laughing at the idea that he would do business with a drug cartel. His reputation for being squeaky clean was etched in stone. All of his accountants were routinely checked for signs of wrongdoing. He always ran background checks on his larger prospective clients. If anyone even seemed to be linked to a criminal enterprise, he would simply avoid doing business with them and recommend a rival firm to better suit their needs. The notion of being a money launderer was too ludicrous for Tom to take seriously.

“And what else did you hear? Like, the Loch Ness Monster’s coming to eat my cat?”

Vivian gave a nerdy little laugh in reply, which Tom found amusing.

“Well, I heard that your wife was sleeping with the guy across the street and that both of your kids aren’t yours.”

Tom’s smile vanished, replaced with a sincere scowl.

“All right, ‘Storky.’ It is time for you to leave.”

Vivian gently bit her tongue and nodded with a quiet anger.

“Fair enough. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. It’s been good seeing you on your feet, Tom. Especially since your mistress gave you AIDS and everything.”

“I don’t have a mistress!” Tom yelled, as his face reddened. “Now get off my porch you crazy bitch!”

Vivian’s face sprouted that eerie smile again. With a parting nod, she turned and walked away. Tom slammed the door and went upstairs. He’d have to call Sid Conyez on Monday. The private investigator was so good he could find Bigfoot if someone paid him to. Sid would find out everything about Vivian and see what that psycho chick was up to. For now, Tom returned to his wonderful life and his comfortable bed.

Tom enjoyed his weekend and left for work on Monday.

The weekend was so good that he had actually forgotten about Vivian’s bizarre visit.

When arrived at work, Tom found dozens of local cops and FBI agents on the premises. His files were being confiscated and eight of his brightest accountants were under arrest. Every local news network had a team in place, reporting on the raid at Tom’s firm. He was promptly arrested and stuck in a holding cell with a pair of huge felons who thought he had a nice ass.

Having been properly beaten up and otherwise molested, Tom limped to a pay phone to make his one phone call to his loving wife. A man’s voice answered on the other end.

“Who the hell is this?!” Tom yelled.

“Warren,” the voice replied. “I live across the street.”

“What are you doing in my house?!”

“I’m helping your wife move into my house. When she found out you were laundering money for a drug cartel, she finally decided to leave your unfaithful ass.”

“What are you talking about?!” Tom yelled. “I never cheated on my wife!”

“You’re full of shit,” Warren confidently replied. “Sid Conyez took some pretty disgusting photos of you banging some trailer-trash whore.”

Tom’s mind reeled. This wasn’t possible! It had to be a setup … but how?

“You are losing everything. That is now a simple formality,” Warren gloated. “I’ll raise the kids as if they were my own, you spermless prick.”

Tom hung up the phone and stared off into space with amazement.

Four years passed.

Tom slept in the prison infirmary, a gaunt shell of his former self. He was divorced, penniless, and the children hated him. Five attempts had been made on his life by killers from a drug cartel he had never heard of. The only bright spot to his twenty-year sentence was that the prison had excellent facilities for treating terminal AIDS patients. But Tom didn’t really mind dying. Having lost everything, he really couldn’t wait for the Reaper.

“How are you feeling, Tom?” Vivian’s voice asked from the other side of the room.

She headed toward him in that same pink dress. Only now, Vivian looked like a teenager again! In shock, Tom looked around at the four other patients in the room. Two played cards. One slept. The fourth was writing a letter. The prison doctor passed through her like she wasn’t even there!

“I tried to find you,” Tom said with a weak voice. “When I heard you were dead, I just didn’t believe it … ‘til now. What did you do to me? Some kind of curse?”

“You always were the smart one, Tom. That’s why I asked you for help with Physics class. Remember?”

Oddly enough, he did. He remembered that Vivian was failing the class, swallowed her pride, and came to him for help. He offered to tutor her for free. But as a prank, he showed her flawed equations and basically set her up to fail her midterm exam. His buddies bought him a six-pack of beers for that one. It seemed like a good idea, back then.

“When I failed Physics, my dad beat me down really bad and left me in the basement to bleed,” Vivian sadly reminisced as she sat at the foot of Tom’s bed. “That’s when I just gave up.”

“What’d you do?” Tom asked.

“I swallowed a bottle of pills,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I died, Tom. My parents ‘withdrew’ me from school and didn’t tell anyone.”

Vivian’s expression darkened as she remembered her early days as a ghost. “They just had me cremated, left my urn on the front porch, and blew town. The cheap fuckers didn’t even have a wake!”

Vivian stared off with a vicious smile.

“But I came back, Tom – with powers. And my parents were the first to die.”

Tom looked down at his right hand and remembered the pain he felt when he shook hands with Vivian.

“I’ve been settling old scores ever since,” Vivian said with a shrug. “And the best thing of all? My stutter went away.”

Tom sank into his mattress and felt like slime.

“You lied to me about Physics, so I thought it fitting that I turned your life into a lie. The most amazing thing is that if you lie hard enough – I mean just right – you can bend reality to your whim.”

Tom thought about apologizing but realized it wouldn’t help. Nothing would. But something inside him refused to give up – even now. His mind searched for a solution.

“Well,” Vivian said as she rose to leave. “I’m done with you. I think I’ll pay Skip Hunt a visit. Remember your ol’ buddy, Skip?”

“Wait,” Tom painfully sat up. The other prisoners curiously looked at him. They thought he was talking to himself. “You can fix this!”

“I am ‘fixing’ this, you son of a bitch!” Vivian snipped. “I’m going to take out every last one of you. Maybe then I’ll find some peace.”

“No!” Tom begged. “Listen! If you can bend reality, can’t you go back?! Back to those shitty years?!”

Vivian paused, surprised that she hadn’t considered that possibility.

“You could lose the stutter, become the most popular girl in school, and make your dad a non-violent hippie – if you lied just right.”

“But you’d just do what you did to someone else.”

“True,” Tom admitted, his voice thick with desperation. “But it beats being dead, right? You’d have your life back! You could have anything you wanted! Right?!”

Vivian glared at him, unsure if he was trying to deceive her (yet again).

But the rationale was so solid …