The Suicide Game

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Book excerpt

Prologue 

ORLANDO SPOTTED THE MARK WALKING out of the First Zion Baptist Church just after nine o’clock. He waited in the shadows beside a large oak tree until the man walked past him. He stepped out, following the man down the sidewalk and around the large stone church. As he moved closer to the bookish little man, Orlando wondered why anyone would want such a man dead.

            Just as Orlando reached for his pistol, the little man stopped and turned. Orlando stood in the light of a streetlamp, and the little man looked him in the eyes.

            Shit, he’d been made.

            Orlando hesitated for a moment, and the man spoke. “Mr. Williams?”

            This caught him off guard.

            “Yes?”

            “You’re Keisha’s father, aren’t you?”

            This sent Orlando reeling. He wondered how this nebbish little man knew his name, and more importantly, about Keisha. Normally Orlando was cool and collected, this stopped him in his tracks.

            “Yes,” Orlando said.

            The man smiled. “You don’t remember me.”

            Orlando said nothing.

            “I’m Edgar Wilby,” the man said. “I was your daughter’s kindergarten teacher. I was quite saddened to hear of her death.”

            Overcome with grief and confusion, Orlando found himself unable to speak.

            “Keisha was such a bright little girl, Mr. Williams,” the man said. “She was my favorite student.”

            Feeling his eyes welling up with tears, Orlando reached for the gun. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

            He raised the pistol to Edgar Wilby’s face and squeezed the trigger.

Chapter One: Room 219 

TODAY WAS JUST ONE MORE shit day in a long succession of shit days for Bobby Coyle, but he didn’t care. Twenty-three years of failure upon failure and a now daily regimen of crystal meth and pot had made him completely numb to the world around him.

            Bobby was, by all accounts, unreliable. It was for this reason he’d lost a long string of jobs ranging from pizza delivery boy to usher in an all-night porno theater. This was also the reason he was now close to losing his job as a gay phone sex operator.

            For the second time this week, Bobby was a half an hour late for work. And, as usual, he looked like shit. His bushy blond hair was flattened on the left side of his head where he’d been lying, his face was unshaven, and his clothes—a t-shirt and faded blue jeans—were as unkempt and dirty as his body. But none of this bothered Bobby in the least. This was the beauty of crystal meth.

            When he stepped into the tiny front office, there were no workers congregating. They were already on the phones taking calls. He tried to avoid the inevitable conversation with the receptionist by walking deftly behind her to the time clock. She was talking on the telephone, same bitchy tone she always had, and Bobby reached the time clock without being seen. However, he found his time card had been removed from the rack. Now he would have no choice but to speak to the shrew.

            He stepped around the big metal desk and into the receptionist’s view just as she said her goodbyes and hung up the phone. She looked up at him.

            “Coyle, right?”

            He nodded.

            “Kevin wants to speak to you.” She picked the telephone back up and pushed a button. She waited for Kevin to pick up on the other end, eyeing Bobby suspiciously as she did so.

            “Kevin, I’ve got Bobby Coyle here.”.

            The receptionist looked at him. “Kevin says to go on back to his office.” Bobby said nothing. He simply turned and headed for the office where he’d been reprimanded so many times before.

            As he made his way to the office, he imagined Kevin’s beet-red, bloated face, always conveying outward happiness but doing little to mask his obvious misery. Kevin, who was only about thirty-years-old, weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds and looked as though he were only a sandwich away from a coronary. Kevin would be sitting there, crammed behind his desk like an obese man in a circus show riding a tiny tricycle. He would be wearing his usual attire—a white dress shirt with rolled up sleeves and large sweat stains beneath his armpits. Bobby wondered which tie Kevin would be wearing today. After all, he had only four, so a betting man had a twenty-five percent chance of winning this wager. First there was the generic red and blue striped variety—the perennial favorite of used car salesmen across the land. The second tie bore the Nascar logo with dozens of tiny race cars speeding around in all directions against a blue background. Kevin’s third tie was bright orange and featured Tweety Bird in the center. There was, naturally, a voice bubble out to the side in which Tweety was proclaiming that he tawt he taw a puddy tat. The fourth and most comical tie in his collection was solid gray and looked like a small child’s tie. It was thin and so short it barely reached the middle of his stomach.

            Bobby thought it was ridiculous that Kevin wore ties to this job. It seemed to him to be a mockery of real businessmen with real jobs. Besides, how could anyone possibly take a man seriously who was wearing a Nascar tie? Kevin reminded Bobby of a character from a Christopher Guest film; one of those people who took themselves and their jobs way too seriously, somehow completely oblivious to the utter joke they’d become.

            When Bobby reached the broom-closet-sized office, he found Kevin on the telephone. Bobby stepped into the frame of the door, and Kevin looked up. Bobby silently made a knocking motion. Kevin then raised his meaty finger and gave him the universal “just a minute” sign.

            “We’ll be getting the download in the next day or so, I guess,” Kevin was saying. He then listened to the person on the other end of the telephone before speaking again. “Our resources are already stretched too thin. I don’t think a fifth line is the answer. Month after month the 1-900-MAN-MEAT line brings in the most revenue hands down.”

            While waiting for Porky the Boss to get off the phone, Bobby’s eyes surveyed the office. Several framed pictures hung crookedly on the wall behind Kevin. In one, a small boy sat on Big Bird’s lap. The little boy was screaming, obviously afraid of the department store Sesame Street character. Another photograph found Kevin and his wife—equally fat-faced—posing in front of a cheesy backdrop depicting a burning fireplace and Christmas tree. Kevin’s wife had blinked when the picture was taken, leaving her forever grinning with her eyes half open. The effect of this was that she looked as though she was either drunk or retarded, maybe even both. Bobby’s eyes fell upon a faded photograph of a trashy-looking old woman with a beehive hairdo. It appeared that virtually every other one of her teeth was missing. Humorously, the largest frame contained a photo of Kevin posing with Richard Simmons. Kevin was wearing his Tweety Bird tie and had his arm around Simmons, who looked uncomfortable but was nonetheless putting up an uneasy smile.

            “I think we should cut our losses and consider discontinuing the 1-800-ASS-RAPE line.”. A moment later Kevin hung up the phone and looked at Bobby with an expression of complete and utter contempt. “You’re thirty-six minutes late, Coyle.”

            Bobby shrugged. “Well, actually I’ve been here for a few minutes, so I’m really probably only about thirty minutes late.”

            Kevin didn’t smile.

            “Look,” Bobby began weakly, “I’m really sorry.”

            Kevin exhaled in an exaggerated manner. “You were sorry two days ago, too.”

            Bobby thought it best to say nothing. He’d let Kevin have his say and then, hopefully, that would be that.

            “Just because we have a laid-back atmosphere here doesn’t mean you can just waltz in whenever you please.”.

            Bobby tried his best to sound humble, almost succeeding. “I know.” He nodded and paused for effect, then added, “It won’t happen again.”

            “It won’t happen again? It always happens. It’s just you. It’s who and what you are. There’s only one way I can think of to end this cycle, and that’s to fire you. But then you’ll just take your happy ass and go work somewhere else and pull the same shit there.”

            Again, Bobby said nothing. After all, asshole or not, Kevin was right—Bobby couldn’t deny it.

            “So what’s the excuse?” Kevin asked.

            “Huh?”

            “What’s your excuse for being late? You always have some bullshit story for why you’re late, so let’s hear it. What is it today? Your car wouldn’t start?”

            Bobby smiled. “No, that was two days ago.”

            Kevin didn’t smile, and Bobby thought he was about to be terminated. So, again, he pretended to be humble and sincere. “Look, it was an honest mistake. I was just running late today. I’m really sorry.”

            Kevin just continued staring in disgust. At first, his expression made Bobby think his boss might climb over the desk to kick his ass, but the look faded and Bobby could tell that he was going to let him slide this time.

            “Another thing,” Kevin said, trying to maintain the momentum. “I know these people on the phone can’t see how you’re dressed, but come on… Take a shower already. You’ve been wearing that same crappy Sex Pistols shirt for five or six days now.”

            Knowing he was in the clear, Bobby looked down and faked an apology. “Sorry.”

            Kevin shook his head in defeat. “Go get on the phone, Coyle.”

To say that Bobby disliked his job would have been an understatement. He loathed it. Despised it. Hated, hated, fucking hated it. Naturally, working as an operator for a gay sex line was nobody’s dream job—could there possibly be anyone who aspires to that?—but it was worse for Bobby because he wasn’t gay. So how, he’d been asked, could he work in such a field if he wasn’t gay? How was it possible for a heterosexual male to describe to men the various ways in which he could suck their cocks? Most people didn’t believe this was possible. However, Bobby consistently proved them wrong by doing what was arguably a better job than many of his homosexual colleagues. In fact, he’d become so good at what he did that he’d developed a considerable following of regular clients who asked for him by name.

            Most of his coworkers speculated that Bobby was, in fact, a closeted homosexual. Such talk infuriated him, only fueling further speculation. “Me thinks he doth protest too much,” one of them had said. If the other callers had any idea he’d actually slept with his fair share of men, they’d have had a field day labeling him. Despite having engaged in these affairs, Bobby refused to entertain thoughts that he might actually be gay or even bisexual. In his mind it all made perfect sense—he’d needed the money. Therefore, if he had to give a complete stranger a blowjob in order to pay his electricity bill, then so be it. After all, he reasoned, what had it really cost him? Thirty minutes of his time? An hour? Never once did it cross his mind that a truly heterosexual male would probably not have performed these acts so willingly, no matter how much he was being paid.

            This hatred of his job, which was actually more of a hatred of homosexuality, resulted in a general disdain for his clients. Not that anyone noticed. No, despite Bobby’s frequent daydreams of murdering his clients, they had no idea. In fact, many of them would ultimately remark that he’d been the nicest, most personable phone sex operator they’d ever ejaculated to. (He was nice, at least, as long as that was what the customer wanted. But when they requested that he pretend to be an angry policeman or an abusive stepfather, he complied happily.)

            Bobby walked to his cubicle. He waited three minutes for the phone to be switched over so it could receive incoming calls. He waited another eight minutes before receiving his first call of the day.

            It was from a man who called himself Rick—the names were all pseudonyms here—who identified himself as a heterosexual male. Rick told Bobby that he enjoyed going deer hunting, and he had a fantasy involving this. “I want you to take me out into the forest at gunpoint, and rape me,” he explained nervously. “You know, like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.”

            This was the first time Bobby had heard this particular fantasy. Nevertheless, he assisted Rick in imagining this scenario.

            “Where’s the gun?” Rick asked, panting hard.

            “It’s in my hand.”

            “Yeah, but where’s it at—where are you aiming it?”

            “It’s aimed at your head. I’ve got it right to the back of your head.”

            This answer seemed to excite Rick, and he began panting harder and harder. Within thirty seconds he had ejaculated. After whooping and gasping and making all of the customary male orgasm sounds, Rick hung up the phone. There was no “thank you” or “goodbye.” Perhaps Rick had become embarrassed after his orgasm had broken the fantasy and slammed him back into reality. Or maybe he just wanted to save money by completing the call as quickly as possible. After all, the cost per minute was outrageous; a guy almost had to mortgage his home just to get his rocks off.

            The next two calls Bobby received were pretty standard “What do you look like?” and “what are you wearing?” calls. On the fourth call, the guy simply asked Bobby to breathe heavily into the phone as he masturbated.

            Call number five was from an older man calling himself Adam. The man said he was a businessman from Nebraska staying in Los Angeles for a few days. He said he had a wife and kids back home. He said he spent a lot of time on the road, staying in hotels, but on this trip he wanted to try something different. His fantasy was that he would leave a key for Bobby at the front desk of the hotel where he was staying. Adam would then lie in bed naked with the lights off. Bobby would then unlock the door, enter the room, peel back the sheets, and give him head.

            No problem, Bobby thought. He described every detail of this to Adam, who occasionally said something like “rub my balls” or “finger my ass.” Unlike most callers, Adam didn’t sound like he was masturbating. He just seemed to be imagining the detailed scenario Bobby was laying out for him. Maybe, Bobby thought, the man couldn’t get hard anymore. After all, the guy sounded like he was at least fifty.

            Once Bobby had completed his part in the role-playing game, Adam asked him where he was located.

            “I’m not allowed to give out that information.”

            “No specifics,” Adam said. “I just wondered what part of the country you’re in.”

            “Oh, I’m in L.A.”

            “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in helping me make this fantasy a reality, would you?”

            Bobby paused before answering. “Do me a favor and stay on the line for a moment after I answer you, okay?”

            “All right.”

            “No,” Bobby said flatly. “That is both illegal and against company policy.”

            Bobby then unplugged the second line from the back of his telephone to keep from being overheard.

            “Sorry,” Bobby said. “That was for anyone who might be listening in.”

            Adam laughed. “No one listening now?”

            “No,” Bobby answered. “I’ll help you, but only for the right price.”

            The right price was $200.

            “I’ll give you $500 cash for one hour of your time,” Adam said.

            When he heard this, Bobby nearly fell out of his seat. The most he’d ever made in the dozen or so times he’d done this previously was $300.

When Bobby got off work he still had two hours to kill before meeting Adam at the Hotel Arkadia. Thinking back to Kevin’s remarks regarding his personal hygiene, Bobby decided to go home and take a shower before going to the hotel. He hadn't a clue when he'd last taken a shower. Had it been a week? Two weeks? Three? Shit, he thought. This was not a good sign. He’d have to lay off the meth a bit.

            This gave him an idea. He pulled the Chevy Nova over to the curb, and put the car in park. He then removed the metal Altoids box from the glove compartment and extracted a small baggy of crystal meth. Since he was in a hurry and didn’t want to be seen, he pressed his right index finger into the baggy hard enough so that some of the tiny crystals stuck to its tip. Using his other hand to seal off his left nostril, he raised the finger up to his right nostril and snorted hard. At once, his nasal passage burned and his eyes watered.

            A lot of cokeheads complained that they hated meth because of the burn, but Bobby loved it. He loved everything about meth, from the choking feeling of the crystals sliding down the back of his throat to straining on the toilet only to produce the tiniest pebble-sized turd. But Bobby wasn’t hooked. Not yet, anyway. He just loved the way it made him feel. Like Superman. He loved being so jittery that he felt as though he might jump out of his skin at any moment. He loved those long, effortless sex sessions on meth. He loved feeling utterly fucking invincible.

            After two more quick snorts, Bobby put the baggy back inside the can alongside the razor blade and the cut-off straw. He returned the Altoids box to the glove compartment and resumed his drive home.

            When Bobby got to his apartment, he walked in to find Stephanie and Carlos naked and passed out on the couch, the scents of weed and sex intermingling in the tiny room. Carlos was a crackhead Mexican surfer who lived in the next apartment. He and Stephanie routinely got high together. Bobby had known for some time that Steph was fucking the guy. Truth be told, he didn’t really give a shit, but he didn’t appreciate having to see them lying naked together on his fucking couch. After all, he’d traded the old Nintendo with which he’d spent much of his wasted youth for the damned thing, and here she was balling Mexicans on it.

            Bobby picked up Carlos’ shorts and threw them at him. “Get up, fucker. Time to go home.” When the shorts struck Carlos in the face, he sat up, started to wake up, and then fell back into a deep slumber.

            Bobby put his hand on Stephanie’s shoulder, shaking her. “Wake up, bitch. Get this asshole out of here.” To this Stephanie mumbled something inaudible, pushed his hand away, and tried to go back to sleep. Bobby shook her again, this time harder.

            She opened her bloodshot eyes and looked at him with pure hatred and annoyance. “What the fuck, man?”

            “Please get this stupid fucking crackhead out of here.”

            “You know what, motherfucker,” Stephanie said, rubbing her nose like a child. “This is my apartment, too.”

            Bobby’s eyes widened. “What? Since when do you pay bills? In fact, when do you ever do anything besides get high and fuck this son of a bitch on my couch?”

            She shook her head, not believing what she was hearing. This bitch was lying naked next to her crackhead surfer buddy whom she’d just fucked, and she had the audacity to act as though it was Bobby who was in the wrong? Fuck that.

            “I don’t work my ass off so you can bang this guy in our apartment,” he said.

            She laughed at this.

            “What?” he asked.

            “You’re talking about working?” she asked, cracking up. “You have one job where you have phone sex with men all day, and then you have a second job where you work as an errand boy for a goddamn hitman!”

            Bobby cocked his head angrily. “Keep it down.”

            But Steph being Steph, she didn’t keep it down. No, her voice just got louder and louder. “What? You don’t want anyone to know you work for a hitman? Is that it?”

            Bobby could feel himself losing control of his anger. He asked her again to keep it down. “You could get us both killed talking like that.”.

            But she was on a roll.

            “Or maybe it’s that you don’t want anyone to know that sometimes you suck guys’ dicks for money?”

            “I said stop it,” he growled.

            “And not just on the phone,” she continued. “You have the nerve to insinuate that I’m a whore, when you’ve sucked off more guys than I—“

            And he slapped her.

Hard.

So hard, in fact, that the slap wasn’t really a slap at all. It was more of an open-handed blow. When he hit her, her head rocked back hard into Carlos’ face, but the motherfucker still didn’t wake up. She sat there looking up at Bobby with big round eyes, filling up with tears, the print of his hand reaching across her cheek up to her temple. She was stunned. For the first time, Stephanie had nothing to say.

            Bobby was trembling with anger. He stepped toward her, pointing. As he did so, she cowered back. He was sorry he’d hit her, but he was way too angry to apologize.

            “Don’t you try anything stupid,” he advised. “Yeah, you’re right. You’re right, bitch, I do work for a hitman. Don’t you forget that. I make one call and you’re gone.” He looked at Carlos, still asleep. “You and this sorry motherfucker.”

            Of course he was bluffing, but she didn’t need to know that. He could never have her killed. Hell, he couldn’t even bring himself to leave her now that she was a crackhead fucking men inside his apartment. Bobby instantly regretted making the threat. But he hated being called a cocksucker, and he hated the insinuation that he was gay. He wouldn’t take that shit from anybody.

There were no available parking spots on the street in front of the Hotel Arkadia, so Bobby had to park in the garage around back. He checked his watch—still ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Adam. He reached into his pocket and fished out the pack of Djarum Splash clove cigarettes and a lighter. He put one to his mouth, letting it dangle there, and lit it, leaning against the car. There was no hurry. After all, if he went inside now, there was a chance he might arrive early and catch the perv getting prepared. Bobby smoked the cigarette down to the filter before walking around the hotel.

            The Hotel Arkadia was a dingy shithole. It looked like it had probably been swanky once, long ago. But today it was rundown and dirty-looking. There was a faint smell of vomit in the lobby, hiding just beneath the overpowering odor of citrus cleaning solution. Neither the vomit nor the cleaning solution would have smelled appealing, but the combination of the two was unbearable.

            Bobby licked his lips, the sweet taste of clove on them. As he moved through the lobby, he thought of an old movie he’d seen on cable. Dustin Hoffman had been in it. This was back when Hoffman was still young, and Hoffman was nervous because he was meeting a married woman in a hotel for sex. When Hoffman approached the front desk, the clerk asked him, “Are you here for the affair?” The guy was referring to some sort of function being held inside the hotel, but Hoffman nearly shit himself. Bobby grinned at the thought of this.

            When he approached the front desk, Bobby smiled and told the man, “I’m here for the Singleman party.”

            The man frowned. “Singleman party?”

            The man obviously hadn’t seen the movie. Fuck it, Bobby thought. Not everyone’s a film buff.

            “Forget it. My name is Jerry Davenport and I’m supposed to pick up a key card for room 219.”

Bobby was perspiring. He was nervous, but no more than he would have been when sleeping with a woman for the first time.

            He slid the key card into the slot and the light turned green. He then turned the handle and opened the door to room 219. The lights were off and the room was completely black, just as Adam had said it would be. After the door shut behind him, it took Bobby’s eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. Even then he couldn't see a thing.

            “Uh, Adam?” he asked, trying to find his way.

            And the voice said, “I’m here.”

            “Sorry,” Bobby said awkwardly. “Just trying to figure out where you are.”

            Bobby moved slowly to the edge of the bed. He didn’t want to trip over anything and ruin Adam’s fantasy. He reached down and felt the edge of the bed. He then slid his hand over, searching for Adam. His hand immediately found Adam’s leg beneath the blanket. Bobby ran his hand up smoothly over Adam’s torso. He then climbed into bed, straddling Adam. Adam’s hands moved inside Bobby’s shirt, caressing his chest.

            “Why don’t you take that off?” Adam asked.

            Bobby slid the shirt up over his head and tossed it to the floor. Bobby leaned in and kissed Adam softly. His mouth was warm and inviting. Bobby then began to slowly kiss his way down Adam’s body, pulling down the blanket as he went. First he kissed his neck. Then his chest. Then his belly button. While kissing Adam’s midriff, Bobby slid his hand down to Adam’s rock hard penis and began stroking it. Bobby slowly kissed his way down toward his hand.

            “I know my fantasy was for you to do it in the dark,” Adam said, “but now I think I’d like to watch. Would it be okay if I turned on the lamp?”

            Bobby lifted his face. “I’d like that—for you to watch, I mean.”

            As Adam switched on the light, Bobby kissed his way through the foliage of his pubic hair. Bobby paused a moment to look up at him.

            The face he saw was one he knew.

            The blue eyes he found himself staring into were his own.

            “Bobby?” Adam asked, obviously in shock.

            The man’s name wasn’t Adam at all. It was Jack Coyle, and he was Bobby’s father.