The Tampoovian maid led Bob quickly up a grand spiral staircase. She was mumbling incoherently to herself as she tried to remain calm and every once in awhile she would run her fingers through her long black hair and take in a deep breath. This was something she did often when stressed on the job at the Fantas Estate. The maid had never worked in such a hostile and frightening environment before; rumors of ghosts among the staff, disappearing maids and that was all nothing compared to the rumors of what Mr. Fantas did to servants who didn’t keep the house up to his personal standard. Deportation back to Tampoo was the least of her worries when rumors about torture chambers in the basement were flying around.
Bob didn’t seem to notice the maid’s nervousness because he was encompassed in his own thoughts. He needed to find the star map and bring it back to Ruler before everything was ready for the trip. If he failed, Ruler would hunt him down and kill him. So Bob was riding on the faith that a copy of the map had to be with Lee or Marten. By the end of the night he would be hero or zero.
Bob crossed his fingers and said a short pray in his head, though, he wasn’t praying to anything or anyone in particular. He would pray to a rock or a plant if he thought it would help his situation get any better. Bob wasn’t a very religious person when it came down to it. He had grown up in a semi-atheistic home. He only used god when he found it convenient for his purposes. His own father had told him that religion was a hobby for the rich and privileged. He had told him that only people with better paying jobs and capital status got to go worship on weekends. He remembered how his trash hauling father had pointed to a television set in the corner of the room and said “William, you might as well worship that for the rest of your life. At least it gives you answers at times. At least it’s there for you when you need comfort.”
That’s life for you, thought Bob. You need a childhood role model and all you get is a lousy trash pusher for a father… a no good trash pusher. Stupid wog! Bob clinched his fists and tried to think of the task at hand. This whole praying business was not bringing peace to his troubled heart. His whole body was aching with anxiety. He felt more stressed out for even thinking about praying and asking something to solve all his problems. That can’t do anything, thought Bob. All those evangelists on television that say that prayer is a way to escape were full of crap and need to be shot! The world would be a better place without religion! He thought cynically.
Bob rested his hand on the grey stone railing and let out a heavy sigh, his mind still whirling with bitter emotions. He looked up at the massive chandelier on the high ceiling and nearly fell over. He had never really seen something so massive and beautiful before in his entire life. Each piece of shimmering crystal seemed to sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow. It was truly a sight to behold. He forgot about all his troubles for a moment and reached out for the maid. Still looking upward in awe, Bob touched her shoulder and pointed to the ceiling.
“Where did this come from?” His voice was filled with wonder. “It’s incredible!”
The maid looked up and studied the floating crystals for a minute. They looked like giant icicles hanging from the high ceiling and it felt as if she and her captor had walked into some kind of a snow cave in the mountains.
“Those are from my island. We call them the Wacoo Detrue. They bring good luck and happiness to the owner of them. Mr. Fantas is always looking for good fortune. He likes the magic it brings.” Her accent was still very much present as she talked. She was still switching her D’s and T’s, and Bob found it annoying to listen to; as if a little child were speaking.
Bob whistled his approval at the giant structure. He still couldn’t believe how massive it was.
“This thing must have taken builders months to crafts. I bet it cost a small fortune on your boss’s part.” He pointed to the sharp corners of the chandelier. They were sparkling like moonbeams. “Look how smooth and perfectly cut those edges are… they look amazing!”
“I don’t know how long it took them,” said the maid shortly and she turned to pressed forward up the stairs, her black shoes clicking noisily on the granite steps. “It was here when I was first brought to the estate. It means ‘good luck’. The more of the Wacoo Detrue you have, the more good luck you have.”
“You certainly have a very rich employer!” stated Bob with distaste. “I can’t say that I have ever heard of anyone buying luck before.”
The maid didn’t respond to this comment but reached the top of the stairs and started down a long narrow corridor. She didn’t feel like being too chatty with the man who had threatened her life and was making her betray Mr. Fantas. Not that she had any incredible loyalty to Mr. Fantas, but the things she had heard about his punishment methods were enough to send a chill down her spine. Bob followed quietly as they pass through a series of hallways and rooms. The smell of lilacs and fresh linen were present in every room they passed by, so much so, that Bob thought he was walking in some kind of flowerless garden; the house was fresher than a spring morning. The only thing missing was the sound of the birds singing and the bees buzzing.
“This is quite the place you live in,” said Bob.
“Yes,” said the maid, not really wanting to talk with him more. She stopped and pulled out a piece of paper from her front dress pocket. She examined it for a moment then replaced it back into her dress. Bob guessed that the thing she was holding was some kind of map of the Fantas Estate. He could use the little piece of paper later when the time came for him to vacate the premises. By then, the maid would no longer be needed and he would be well on his way back home, holding the star map and calling his boss about the good news.
They continued down the long hallways of the Fantas house and the maid pulled the piece of paper out a few more times, usually at the end of every hallway and door. Bob found the pattern predictable and agitating.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” asked Bob.
The maid nodded her head.
“We are close.”
“How close?” asked Bob as he watched her pull out the piece of paper again. He was getting sick of her checking it every other minute. “What does that thing say? Why do you keep looking at it?”
“What thing?”
“That bloody thing you have in your hands.” Bob pointed to the piece of paper in her hands. “Is that a map of this place?”
The maid looked at him with confusion. Bob rolled his eyes with annoyance at her dazed expression. It was obvious that the little islander girl was slow. This is what you get when you hire foreign workers, thought Bob, just blank stares and confusion. He reached out suddenly for the map and tried to take it from the maid. The maid saw the sudden action and pulled it away from Bob before he could grab it. She might have been stupid, but slow was not in her nature. She had the reflexes of a cat. Bob pulled his hands back in and gritted his teeth.
“We are close,” she said firmly. “Right this way.” She walked over to a door and opened it up. Bob shook his head with frustration and anger. He felt like screaming at the ignorant little wog of a worker. He followed the maid closely into another massive hallway with dark wooden doors. Each wooden door seemed to have a peculiar design engraved upon its surface. In the distance Bob could see other people and workers vacuuming and cleaning. Their suited, clean cut appearance was quite intimidating. Bob didn’t expect there to be so many of them. It felt like he was in some kind of expensive hotel. Why were there so many people here? Thought Bob. I hate people! It looks like an over-funded orphanage in here.
“This is where the guests of Mr. Tash sleep,” said the maid as she walked down the massive hall. She motioned to all the doors around them and waved to a few people. “We are all guest of Mr. Tash. He gives us housing for our services. We are his family… or at least that is what he says we are.”
“Are we close?” asked Bob impatiently ignoring the maids irritating chatter.
“We are.”
Bob was growing more and more excited. He often got this way when his goals were in sight. He reached over and turned the maid around.
“Where are Marten and Lee’s rooms? Are they around here? Are they in their rooms?”
“Yes… and no.” The maid looked down at Bob’s hand in protest. His long, white fingers were digging into her smooth skin making her feel uncomfortable. “If they are staying here then they should be somewhere in these halls.”
“Take me to them,” demanded Bob. He looked around at all the doors mounted in the walls. There must have been a hundred or so of them. Each one was big and each one had a massive brass doorknob. “Which room is theirs? Are they close to us now?” He could almost taste the copy of the star map. It was behind one of these doors in here… it was close.
The maid reached into one of her dress pockets and fumbled around it for a moment.
“Let me see.” She pulled out a scrawny piece of paper and read it under her breath. She looked up and studied the doors. The Fantas estate was so big, it usually took a maid about four years to memorize everything.
“What is that?” asked Bob as he pulled her in closer. He looked around the room to see if anyone was watching them. No one seemed to notice or even care that he was in the hall right now with the maid. Everyone just kept to their work. He eased his grip on her arm a little and whispered quietly to her. “What are you looking at? Let me see it.”
The maid pulled back.
“It’s just the guest list for this hallway; it’s not all that big. Mr. Tash doesn’t have many people who come to visit him.”
“Who’s on the list?” asked Bob demandingly as he leaned in. “Give me that.” He pulled the piece of paper from her hand and read the names in his head. His jaw dropped as he came to the last name on the list. He looked at the maid and gave her a strange look. He pointed to the last name.
“Is this man here? Have you seen him?”
The maid looked over at the piece of paper.
“Yes.” She pointed down the hall. “He’s in room 156. I just finished cleaning his room a few minutes before I started on the boarding office. He is a very nice man... very happy and warm.”
Bob just about lost his cool with at her words. He didn’t like it when people played games with him. He pulled the maid in close and spoke in a harsh tone.
“Don’t mess with me, you worthless wog! Did you see this man today?” Bob’s voice was filled with spiteful desperation.
The maid grimaced and nodded her head.
“Yes, he was here,” she said trying to wiggle her arm free of his grip. “Let go of me!”
Bob let go of her and stepped back. He straightened out his white catering vest and cracked his neck. Excitement rose in his chest and his voice began to rise.
“Take me there! I want to look at this man’s room.”
“What is the matter?” asked the maid. “You don’t like this man?”
“No, I don’t like this man!” yelled Bob mockingly. His voice bounded off the walls like an avalanche. Some of the butlers and maids looked up from their work and stared at the two of them.
“Why not?” asked the maid.
“I killed this man this morning!”
The maid looked stunned.
“You killed this man?”
“Yes, I killed him,” said Bob. “I need you to take me to his room. I need to get something from him.”
“What do you need from him?”
Bob was getting fed up with all her probing questions. He wanted her to just shut up and take him to the room. Why do woman feel the need to ask so many dumb questions, thought Bob. Why do they feel the need to pry into other people’s business? Doesn’t she know that she’s in deep enough as it is? Why does she want to go deeper? He threw his arm around the maid and started hurrying her down the hall.
“I need only one thing from you,” said Bob firmly. “And that is for you to take me to this man’s room and not ask any more questions. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good,” said Bob. “Now which one of these doors is his?”
The maid led Bob a little ways down the wide hall. They eventually stopped in front of room 156.
“This is it,” said the maid as she opened the door. “This is where Mr. Hoffman sleeps.”
Bob smiled menacingly and entered the dark room. The maid followed him and turned on the lights. Bob stood in the middle of the room and looked at all the furnishings and strange painting on the walls. In the far corner rested an extravagant queen sized bed with red satin sheets. On top of the clean satin rested Tom’s tattered jeans. Bob started to laugh uncontrollably, as if seeing some distorted joke behind the whole feel of the room. His voice got gradually louder and louder. He turned and looked over to the maid. His eyes were alive with purpose.
“This is the place I need to be.”
The maid nodded.
Bob turned back to the bed. His mind was swimming in an ocean of thoughts. He wanted to know how Tom had escaped the taxi cab, how he wound up here in this big house and why the Fantas’s were talking with Scar Co and its representatives. Something was up, and Bob was going to get to the bottom of it if it killed him.
* * *
Mr. Ruler opened his eyes slowly and stared at his dark bedroom ceiling. His head was throbbing like the percussion section in a high school band. The pain killers and sleeping pills he had taken only managed to put him into an offset sleep. Every hour felt like he was walking underwater. Every second felt like he was trapped inside his head. His own mind was rolling in and out of consciousness like massive gears on a water wheel. He could hear every loud ticking of the clock on the nightstand. He could hear the blood in his head rushing passed his ears like the going out of the tide and his heartbeat was thumping painfully inside his rib cage. Sweat was now building on his forehead and splotching his neck and back.
It felt like insanity was knocking at his door. His brain couldn’t stop thinking about the future. He couldn’t stop thinking about Bob’s horrible mistake and the future of Shark Inc or about Mr. Edmonds and what he was going to do to him once he found out that the star map was somewhere at the bottom of Aggerton Bay. There was so much responsibility hanging over his head. It felt like someone had put a thousand pound block on his chest.
“I am going to be sick,” mumbled Ruler. He grabbed his bed sheets and sat up quickly. A profound uneasiness settled over his grief-stricken frame and caused him to look around the room frantically. It felt like there was someone there. It felt like there was someone watching him from the darkening shadows of the room. Ruler could hear footfalls from all over the place. It sound like the whole Aggerton City kickball team was jogging around his living room and the sound was coming from the bathroom and the den. There was someone inside his house.
“Who’s there!” yelled Ruler. “Show yourself to me!”
The noise stopped. The only thing that could be heard was the ugly honking of car horns on the streets far below the pent house. Ruler stood up and walked over to his dark dresser and fumbled through his clothes. He pulled out his hand gun and held the cold steel to his forehead. He moaned as he tried to keep his balance. The world around him was spinning like a bloody merry-go-round. He wanted it to stop so he could get off and throw up. That’s the last time I take pain killers with sleeping pills, thought Ruler.
Ruler took a deep breath in an attempt to control his labored breathing. This felt like a nightmare come true. Ruler could still hear the footsteps of someone walking around his apartment. It must have been a very large person from the sound that was being made; as if a giant had walked into his home.
“Big ‘J’!” yelled Mr. Ruler. His words sounded slurred into an incomprehensible mess. “Big ‘J’! That had better not be you! I’ll kill you for this! You no-good waste of flesh! You good-for-nothing piece of garbage! You… you… you idiot!” Ruler staggered over to his bedroom doors and peered out into the hallway. The whole place was dark and deserted. A slight draft could be felt coming from somewhere in the building. This puzzled Ruler. Did I leave a window open? Did a bird get inside? It was slightly common for birds to fly into an apartment window and wreak havoc, but what kind of bird makes banging noises?
Ruler held his gun up and walked cautiously to the balcony at the other end of the hallway. He threw open the doors and stepped out into the open air. A cool breeze washed over his body and sent shivers down his spine. His skin began to prickle and tighten. It was a weird thing to experience. It felt as if he was wearing a rubber suit.
Ruler rubbed his cold skin for a second, walked over to the railing and peered down at the street below. He was thirty stories up. The pent house hotel was a very tall building in Aggerton. Ruler had often thought about what it would be like to just jump off the building and hit the hard pavement below. He wondered what it would feel like to have every bone in the human body shatter into small pieces. Would he still be alive after the impact or would he lie on the ground in agonizing pain for a few minutes before death set in? With all that was going on in his life, suicide seemed like a healthy alternative. It seemed like a better way out.
Ruler shifted his gaze from the traitorous streets to the cool night sky. The stars could be seen shimmering slightly through the smoggy atmosphere. Most of the smog in the city came from the sewers; at least that’s what Ruler thought. The sewer vents on the streets were always pumping out gas and dark clouds into the air. It would be logical to think that most of the pollution came from the sewers. Humans like to live in their own filth, thought Ruler. They like the smell of their own carbon footprint. The city was a big example of that in more ways than one.
“Pathetic,” mumbled Ruler to the people on the street below. “You’re all pathetic.” He turned from the balcony and headed back inside. His moment of thought on the small balcony had caused him to forget about the previous footfalls he had heard in the house. He sat back down on his bed and stared at the far wall. He was gradually getting tired again. He lay back on his bed and closed his eyes. He was about to slip back into slumber when the phone by his bed screamed out its ring.
Ruler yelled loudly and threw his gun across the room. The semi-automatic smashed into the wall and discharged a bullet into the roof. Plaster fell from the ceiling and landed on the floor. Ruler came to his feet and started patting his sides and stomach. He didn’t know what the heck was going on, but his whole body was alert and ready for a fight. He was about to go check the house when the phone rang out again. Ruler turned to the thing and gave it a distasteful look. I should have unplugged that thing, he thought. The last thing I need is more bad news about the trip. He walked over to the black phone and picked it up off the receiver.
“Who the hell is this!?” barked Ruler. “Do you know what time it is!” He shifted his gaze to the little wooden clock on his night stand. His eyes were so blurry that he couldn’t make out what time it was… he gave up trying and focused his attention back on the phone. A smooth voice spoke up from the other end. It sounded confidant and laid back, as if a salesman had found his number.
“Hello, boss. This is Bob.”
“What do you want, Bob? Did you find the star map? You had better have found it, or so help me…”
Bob chuckled.
“Yes, sir, I did find it. It’s right here in front of me.”
“You did!?” said Ruler with excitement. “Where are you?”
“I’m in South Bay.”
Ruler was surprised by this.
“You’re in South Bay? What are you doing in the rich sticks of Aggerton?”
“Finding the star map like you wanted me to, that is what I am doing here,” said Bob. “I found out where Marten and Lee had gone off to and stole the star map back from them. I have it right here in my hands. It’s a weird looking thing. It has a lot of white pointy dots.”
“Great!” said Ruler. “Just great! Everything is working out after all! I won’t have to cancel the trip.”
“I’ll send you a digitalized copy… are you near your fax machine?”
“No,” said Ruler as he ran to his study. “Give me just a minute.” He threw open the doors and ran over to his desk. He turned on the fax machine and hit the green “go” button on top of it. The thing began to warm up.
“Give me a minute, Bob. I want to put some color paper into the machine… I want to see what the whole thing looks like.” Ruler turned on his desktop light and fumbled through his drawers. He found the special type of Conex Revised colored paper and slipped it into the tray and closed it up again.
“Are you ready?” asked Bob.
“Yes, send it!”
“Okay, I’ll send you the front and back… give me a minute.”
The phone went dead suddenly. Ruler dropped the receiver on this desk and waited patiently for the fax to light up. He pulled out his black swivel chair and sat down in it. After a few minutes of waiting a loud beep was heard. The fax machine turned on and started scanning papers slowly. When it was done faxing Ruler grabbed the sheets of paper out of the tray and examined them closely. A wicked smiled crossed his face as he ran his fingers over the glossy pages. The images were perfect! They had a copy of the map now and soon they would have the real thing.
“Bob, you did it,” whispered Ruler under his breath. “You actually did it.”
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