Mad Dog and the Dream Ch. 02

In spite of everything...of his plans, his prior optimism, and his having already acknowledged that today might be his last...Ron felt cold dread.

He went to the spare bedroom and grabbed the envelope Mark had "given" him. He didn't want Maddy opening it in his absence, hoping to get a glimpse of the photographs inside, and discovering that it held only blue construction paper. He'd used the heavy paper he bought for his classroom projects because it gave the illusion of photo paper better than regular printer paper would. He took one last moment to admire the familiarity, the normalcy, of the domestic setting. Who knew if he would ever see it again.

"I have to go to work," he called down the hallway. The door to the bedroom was still closed. He got no response.

He waited an extra second, hoping for some kind of word from his wife, but none came. "Goodbye," he whispered under his breath, and left.

Ron made it to the office in record time. He tried not to think too much about where he was going. Pulling up to the building, he stopped his car in the front lot. Andro was standing near the front door, smoking yet another in his endless line of cigarettes.

"Holy shit," Ron muttered, acting stunned as he stepped out of the car. He looked around and scratched his forehead as he stared at the front face of the office.

"It's a problem," Andro said flatly. He didn't so much as glance at the building's front, which was covered in big spray painted letters. In alternating green, white, and red, the words 'LA RAZA' lit up behind him. Andro kept his eyes on Ron, a vague hint of amusement in his otherwise serious glare.

"Who is La Raza?" Ron asked.

"The LRZ is a gang. Not really our usual competition, but they do a lot in the way of cocaine trafficking. They know we're here, obviously, and they must not read that as good news. It will have to be addressed."

Ron just nodded. He wasn't about to say that he knew all of that and more. As in nearly every city in the country, his school district held yearly mandatory gang awareness meetings. Police and social workers would present updated information regarding gang activity in the area, symbols or signs that were significant, and what to do if these things made any appearances in the classroom.

For the first time since he'd started teaching, Ron had found that knowledge useful last night.

"I suppose you want me to clean it off?" he asked.

Andro took a pull off his cigarette, wincing as he often did and blowing the smoke out. "It's been taken care of," he said. His mouth stretched in a bored yawn, and then he asked, "How did you sleep last night, Ron?"

Ron answered as calmly as he could. "I've slept better." Shrugging, he pushed further. "I stayed up too late, I suppose."

"I suppose," Andro seemed distracted, peering out at the empty side street. "I had a strange dream. Stranger than most, anyway. It's bothered me, some. You and I were in Chicago, it was winter, and we were in a bar. A real dive. We were having a conversation with the bartender, I don't remember what about. What I remember was that the bartender had a real jagged face. Like it had been put together wrong, or like he was some strange painting come to life. And I was working for you."

Ron coughed a laugh. "You were working for me?"

Andro nodded, still distracted, and then turned to look at Ron. "You were in charge. Definitely in charge."

"What about Piero?"

Andro nodded. "That's the question, isn't it? What about Piero." He squinted at the shorter man. "How could Piero ever allow such a thing? Or was he even around? What about Piero...yeah," he took another hit, "that's exactly it." He flung the remainder of the cigarette to the ground. "We'll have to ask him when he gets here Tuesday."

"Piero's coming back? Here?"

Andro nodded. "With the Doctor, I'm afraid." Ron felt his insides twist in cold fear, but Andro was still watching the road. "Don't hide your emotions, Ron. I can read them easy. They drip right off you, right onto the ground. And to be honest, I had the same thoughts you are," he admitted, "and you're right. It's a piss poor way to manage. You don't come running to deal with every little problem. You don't panic. You appoint people you trust, and then you trust the people you appoint. Am I right about that?"

"That makes sense."

"Of course it does." Andro turned to look at him. "Are you proud of what you've done?"

Ron swallowed. "I don't know what you mean."

Andro looked surprised. "You don't know what I mean? Which part? Are you saying that you don't know what you've done, or that you don't know what pride is?" He squinted at the other man and then, as Ron struggled for a response, he smiled. "Ahh. I get you, Ron. I get you. That's gotta be real hard, living like that."

"What are you talking about?"

"Pride. It's a sense of accomplishment, tied to happiness."

"I know what pride is."

"Oh." Andro raised his eyebrows. "I misunderstood. So do you feel pride about what you've done, Ron? When you look back at your life, when you reflect on all of our choices, are you proud of it all?"

Ron let out a weary sigh. Was Andro telling him he was about to die? "I don't know. Some, I guess. There's a lot I'm not proud of."

Andro nodded. "That's good. That's good." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You know, they say that the harder you have to work for something, the greater the challenges involved, the more pride you'll end up feeling regarding it. The longer it takes to achieve a goal, or to build a thing, the more you love it. They say we value something more if it was hard for us." He ran his teeth over his tongue. "They say that God took just seven days to make the world." He shook his head. "Does that seem right to you?"

Suddenly, Ron became aware of the smell of smoke.

"I don't understand," he said.

"I can't just let them think that they can get to me," Andro said quietly. "And I can't operate my kind of business out of a hub that's been discovered."

Ron nodded, trying to control his growing panic. The smell of smoke was stronger, now. He thought he saw a flicker of light through the windows of the office building.

"It took the two of you just three days to get that place cleaned up," Andro noted. "That's six working days total. Less time than it takes to make a world, I'm told." He shrugged, as the fire began to light up the insides of the building and the sound of breaking glass drifted to them from somewhere. "I don't think Larry would mind."

Ron stared vacantly, as the fire rapidly began consuming the small structure. "We should get out of here," he said.

"We're in no danger," Andro said. "But I suppose you're right." He pulled his keys out of his jacket. "You, however, will need to be back here in..." he checked his watch, walking over to his car, "...twelve hours, minus fifteen minutes. And you'll need to bring these with you." Opening his backseat passenger side door, he withdrew a briefcase, an envelope, and the same handgun he'd given Ron to shoot Larry with. "Don't open the briefcase, don't open the envelope, and don't ask questions. Just give it to the men who meet you here. Got that?"

"Who am I meeting?"

"Nevermind. Just do it. And Ron," Andro handed the two items over, "think a little on pride for me, will you?" With that, he started heading back to his car.

Ron looked down at the gun, and up at Andro. He could shoot him now. Maybe the tall man would be too fast for him, but...

"Oh," Andro waved his hand in the air. "I almost forgot!" He climbed into his car and shut the door. Starting the engine, he swung the vehicle around so that he was next to Ron. He rolled down the window and reached out his hand. In it was a small, black object. "The clip in the gun is empty. You'll want this."

Wordlessly, Ron took the offered item, and Andro sped away. Somewhere in the distance, sirens were approaching. Something inside of the building exploded. He stared at the ruined structure for a moment, seeing the words he'd spray painted across the front vanishing in the smoke.

He wondered if he should feel bad about it. He wondered how Larry would feel, if he saw it.

Andro said he wouldn't mind. The sirens were getting closer.

Ron hurried to his car and drove away in the opposite direction.

Breaking multiple speed laws on the way home, Ron tried to calm himself and evaluate what his next move needed to be. The truth was, he had no idea. In fact, he'd had no real structured plan to begin with...he'd been acting out almost randomly from little more than the overwhelming urge to make things not go Andro's way. Sure, he'd had assumptions about the possible consequences, and hopes about best case scenarios, but none of them included Andro burning the fucking building down and sending him alone to meet with members of a dangerous street gang.

None of them included Piero bringing the Doctor back into town.

It seemed more and more like he just wouldn't be able to phase Andro. The tall man didn't expect the world to behave the way he wanted it, and he seemed almost unaffected by any shift in the proverbial landscape.

Ron had thought that he was beginning to understand Andro. He had thought that he knew what the man was after. Now, he felt as lost as he had ever been.

There was still hope that he might get through to Maddy, but even that hope was slim.

His tucked his thoughts away to rest as he pulled into the garage. Maddy's car was gone. He put his head to the steering wheel and cursed. Had she run off, again, to let Andro comfort her? To tell her new friend all about how difficult her husband was being? He slammed the door to his car, leaving everything Andro had given him lying on the passenger seat, and walked into the house.

A letter, written in Maddy's neat hand, sat alone on the kitchen counter.

He picked it up and read. It was a short message, brutal in the way that it was short and direct.

"Ron," it said, "I'm sorry to say that I can't be around you right now. You're actions and words have been so hurtful lately that I think we need some time apart. I've taken most of my stuff and I'm staying with a friend. Don't call me. I will call you if and when I'm ready to talk. Maddy."

He stared at it numbly. So that was it. There was no question in his mind who the 'friend' she was staying with was. In fact, he had a hard time believing that she wouldn't realize that he knew who it was. Could she possibly think that he wouldn't put two and two together?

He wondered if Andro had already known, when they had spoken earlier.

He wondered if Andro knew everything.

It was interesting that Maddy seemed so unconcerned with the photographs, what they might be of. He'd done everything he could, without directly accusing her, to suggest that they might be evidence of her doing something inappropriate. She might have appeared worried at first, but this morning she'd seemed strangely unphased by the possibility. Maybe she just wasn't ashamed of her actions. Maybe she had already been planning on walking away.

Christ. Had the woman ever loved him at all?

He closed his eyes. To an outside observer, Ron might appear to be standing pensively in an otherwise vacant kitchen.

But he knew better.

The world was on fire. All around him. Nothing was left to salvage. Nothing would be remembered. He stood alone in the ashes, consuming the last of the breathable air and staring up at the heavens.

Him.

Not Andro.

His eyes opened, and turned his gaze back towards the garage. He thought about that briefcase.

It was more than ten hours later, the sun having fled from his part of the world and the streetlights struggling feebly to take its place, when Ron stood next to the blackened corpse of the office building. The suitcase rested against his left leg, and the envelope was in his back pocket. Fifteen feet away, leaning up against a white SUV, were two Hispanic men. One of them glanced at the other from time to time, but was content to let his friend do the talking.

"You work for the tall man?" the other one asked. He had almost no accent. Probably, he'd spent his whole life in the States, and what little accent he had was just a carry over from his parents.

"I do."

"Then you have something for us," he said. "And we have something for you in return." He smiled. "Easy work, a nice night...it's a good way to get paid. I think we're all gonna be good friends, man."

"Yeah," Ron said flatly. "I do believe it. Too bad about the building, though."

The smile disappeared. "Like I told your boss man, that wasn't us. I don't know who it was, but they're fucking full of shit. La Rasa did not paint up your building...somebody's fronting, probably to stir shit up. If we find out who it was, we'll take care of them."

"So, if you find them, you'll kill them?"

"You know it, man."

"Then I should tell you," Ron said, affecting Andro's casual indifference, "that it was me." The gun was in his hand and the first shots fired before either man could react. The shorter of the two, the one who had been doing the talking, hit the ground clutching his chest. The larger man, surprisingly, didn't reach for his gun. He simply swung around, making a desperate attempt to climb back into the SUV. Ron watched the bullet catch him in the lower back. He fell to his knees, reaching up for the door handle and fumbling desperately at it. The shorter man was jerking spastically on the ground, screaming. In the distance, a dog was barking.

Ron walked over, leaving the briefcase where it sat. Percussive bursts in his temples rang loudly in his ears, reflecting his heartbeat back to him. He leaned down and looked at the wounded men. "Do you have a cell phone?" he asked. Neither man spoke. The one on his knees looked back at him with terror in his eyes. He must have finally remembered his gun, because his hand fumbled at his waist. "Please don't," Ron whispered. But the man didn't listen; his left hand inched towards the weapon in his waistband. Ron shot him in the forehead, and he ended up sagged lifelessly against the car.

He turned to the man on the ground. "Do you have a cell phone?" he asked again. The wounded man nodded, still vocalizing without forming words and clutching at his chest. Ron fished around in the man's pockets, found the phone, and forced it into one blood-slicked hand. "I'm sure you have people you can call. Maybe they can even keep you alive. You'd better do it fast, though. That looks pretty bad."

The man fell silent. He clutched the phone hesitantly, uncertainty mixed with fear.

Ron nodded solemnly to him, stood up, and walked back to his car. He left the briefcase on the ground. Opening the door and putting on foot in, he surveyed the scene before him. Then, he cupped his hand to his mouth. "If you live long enough," he called out to the man, "tell your friends Andro says hello." Then, he climbed in and drove off.

Alone in the contained space of his vehicle, he dropped the facade. No longer choked off for the sake of survival, his nerves began to get the best of him. His hands shook, first lightly and then so uncontrollably that, halfway home, he had to pull over at a gas station and wait for control to return. He parked away from the light and just sat there, staring silently, until he was safe to drive again.

He'd killed a man tonight. Maybe two.

Two human lives.

He'd had no choice, he told himself. It seemed like a bullshit statement, but he needed to believe that it was true. If he hadn't killed them, they would have killed him when they saw what he'd brought with him. As soon as they realized they'd been conned, it would have been over.

And, if he hadn't shown up at all, Andro and Piero would have seen that he died a slow death for his rebellion.

He thought about Maddy. Would happen to her, now? Would she suffer, as Tony's wife had suffered? Or did an entirely different fate await her?

In a way, she'd saved his life. After reading her note, he'd felt an awesome sense of empowerment for having lost everything. Defying Andro, he'd gone out to his car and defied Andro by opening the briefcase. What he saw inside told him immediately that Andro was setting him up, trying to get him killed. Whatever the two men had expected to find, they would have been furious when they opened the case and discovered that Ron had brought them a ringer.

And it was a ringer. But more than that, what it contained was a message to Ron. A very clear, very specific message.

He'd then torn open the envelope. It contained a bland and unadorned letter about friendship and how this "simple transaction" would "set the pattern for our future dealings." The premise was simple, and familiar to Ron: Andro had offered to sell a relatively small sample of high quality cocaine for an unusually low price as a peace offering.

But he hadn't intended for it to actually happen.

And it wouldn't have happened, because when Ron had opened the briefcase, it had contained nothing but heavy weight blue construction paper.