The Hollow Man

Geryon

They took Bremen to the Las Vegas airport in the middle of the night. A twin-engine turboprop Piper Cheyenne was idling outside a darkened hangar, and it was taxiing for takeoff thirty seconds after the five men boarded. Bremen couldn’t tell a twin-engine turboprop Piper Cheyenne from the space shuttle, but the pilot could, and Bremen was disappointed to find that the pilot also knew exactly who his five passengers were and why they were flying back to New Jersey.

All four of the hoodlums had weapons, and Bert Cappi had carried his .45 automatic under a jacket over his arm, the muzzle of the silencer sticking out far enough to touch Bremen’s right ribs. Bremen had watched enough television to know a silencer when he saw one.

They took off to the west and climbed steeply, banking around to leave the mountains behind them as they headed east. The small aircraft had two seats on each side behind the pilot’s and empty copilot’s seats and a bench against a rear bulkhead. Sal Empori and Vanni Fucci sat across the narrow aisle from each other in the first two seats, nearest the door; the thug named Ernie sat across from Bremen in the second row; Bert Cappi sat buckled into the rear bench directly behind Bremen, his pistol out and on his lap.

The aircraft droned eastward and Bremen set his face against the cool Plexiglas of the window and shut his eyes. The thoughts of the pilot were cool, crisp, and technical, but the four thugs offered a cauldron of dim-witted malevolence to Bremen’s mindtouch. Bert, the twenty-six-year-old killer and son-in-law to Don Leoni, was looking forward to whacking Bremen. Bert hoped that the civilian would try something before they got there so he could do the asshole en route.

Wind gusts buffeted the small aircraft and Bremen felt the emptiness rise inside himself. The situation was ridiculous—cartoonish, TV stuff—but the inevitability of violence was as real as an imminent automobile crash. Until his moments of madness in Denver with the child abuser, Bremen had never hit anyone in anger. He had never bloodied anyone’s nose. To Bremen violence had always represented the last refuge of the intellectually and emotionally incompetent. And now he sat in this sealed machine, the seats and doors less substantial feeling than those of an American automobile, remembering Miz Morgan’s ice-filmed face while flying eastward to his fate, the violent thoughts of these violent men rubbing like sandpaper against his mind. Ironically, there was nothing personal in their eagerness to kill Bremen; it was their way of solving a problem, easing a minor potential threat. They would kill the man named Jeremy Bremen—a name they did not even know—with no more hesitation than Bremen would have in erasing a faulty transform to preserve an equation. But they would enjoy it more.

The Piper Cheyenne flew on, its turboprop engines providing a melodic counterpoint to the dark churnings coming from Vanni Fucci, Sal Empori, Bert, and Ernie. Vanni Fucci was absorbed with counting the cash in Bremen’s steel case; the thief had passed three hundred thousand dollars and had a third of the stacks of bills yet to count. Bremen noticed that Fucci’s excitement at holding and counting the cash throbbed like an almost sexual arousal.

Bremen felt his depression deepen. The apathy that had governed him before his battle with Miz Morgan rose again, a cold, dark tide that threatened to sweep him away into the night.

Into the darkness under the bed.

Bremen blinked, opened his eyes, and began to fight through the sick neurobabble and lulling engine noise, concentrating on the memory of Gail that rose like a solid rock he could climb above the black tide. That memory was his North Star; rising anger goaded him on.

They landed before dawn to refuel. Bremen saw in the pilot’s mind that the airfield was a private place north of Salt Lake, that Don Leoni owned an entire hangar there, and that there would be no chance for Bremen to escape.

They took bathroom breaks with Bert and Ernie holding their silenced .45s at the ready while Bremen urinated. Then he was back in the plane with Bert holding the pistol’s muzzle against the back of his head while the others took their time in the rest room and getting coffee in the hangar office. Bremen saw that even if he somehow miraculously escaped Bert Cappi, the others would hunt him down with no worry about onlookers calling the police.

Refueled, they took off and followed Interstate 80 across Wyoming, although Bremen knew this only from the pilot’s distracted thoughts; the ground itself was concealed beneath a solid cloak of clouds fifteen thousand feet below them. The only noise came from the engines and an occasional radio call or response from the pilot. The late-summer sunlight warmed the interior of the Piper Cheyenne, and one by one the thugs dozed off, except for Vanni Fucci, whose mind was still on the money and how much of it Don Leoni might parcel out as a reward for grabbing the civilian.

Act now! Bremen’s thought caused a surge of adrenaline; he could imagine himself grabbing a weapon from Bert Cappi or Ernie Sanza. He had touched enough of their memories to know how to use the .45 automatics.

What then? Unfortunately, he had touched enough of their memories to know that the four thugs were tough enough and mean enough not to respond to an automatic pistol being waved around in a small aircraft flying at twenty thousand feet. If it had been just Bremen and the pilot, he might have convinced the man to divert from their route to land somewhere. The pilot—a man named Jesus Vigil—had flown drugs from Colombia and outrun DEA chase planes at treetop height before he came to work for Don Leoni, but he liked the sanity of working for the don and had no intention of dying young.

But the four hoodlums, especially Bert Cappi and Ernie Sanza, were sunk much deeper into the imperatives of machismo—or at least their Italian and Sicilian versions of it—and could never let a civilian disarm them or escape their custody. Each would let the other man die before allowing that. Neither had enough intelligence or imagination to imagine dying himself.

They landed again in late morning, this time near Omaha, but Bremen was not allowed to leave the aircraft and the other men were wide-awake now. Bremen could almost taste Bert and Ernie’s eagerness for the civilian—him—to try something. He stared at them impassively.

After taking off again, Bremen catching a glimpse of a wide river before they climbed through clouds, he concentrated on the pilot’s thoughts and memories, including the memory of the flight plan he had just updated in Omaha. The Cheyenne would make one more refueling stop—this one at a private airfield in Ohio—and then would continue straight to Don Leoni’s own airfield a mile from his estate in New Jersey. The limousine would be waiting. There would be a very brief discussion with the don—mostly a monologue in which the man made sure that Bremen was not working for any of Chico Tartugian’s Miami friends, an interrogation that might well include the loss of several of Bremen’s fingers and one or both of his testicles—and then, when they were sure, Bert and Ernie and the Puerto Rican psychopath Roachclip would take Bremen to the Pine Barrens to do what had to be done. Afterward, the garbage truck would take its trash-compacted bundle to a landfill near Newark.

The Piper Cheyenne droned on into midafternoon. Sal and Vanni Fucci spoke of business, confident that the civilian in the backseat would never repeat any of the conversation. Ernie had tried moving to the back bench to play cards with Bert, but Sal Empori had snapped at him, ordering him back to the seat across from Bremen. Ernie brooded, tried reading part of a sex novel, and then dozed off. Eventually Bert Cappi joined him in light sleep, dreaming that he was screwing one of the showgirls in Don Leoni’s new casino.

Bremen was tempted to doze off himself. He had raided as much of the pilot’s professional memory as he was able to find. Sal and Vanni Fucci’s conversation was dying off, replaced only by the engine sounds and occasional radio rasp as they passed from one FAA flight control center to another. But instead of going to sleep, Bremen decided to stay alive.

He glanced down and saw only clouds, but knew from the pilot’s thoughts that they were somewhere east of Springfield, Missouri. Ernie was snoring softly. Bert twitched in his sleep.

Bremen silently unbuckled his seat belt and closed his eyes for five seconds. Yes, Jerry. Yes.

He acted without further thought, moving more quickly and gracefully than he had ever managed before, rising, pivoting, sliding onto the back bench, and lifting Bert Cappi’s automatic out of the gangster’s hand in a single motion.

Then Bremen had his back pressed into the corner where the rear bulkhead met the fuselage and he was swiveling the weapon, first at the startled Bert, then at the snorting, awakening Ernie, and then at all of them as Sal Empori and Vanni Fucci both reached for their weapons.

“You do it,” said Bremen, his voice flat, “and I’ll kill everyone.”

The small aircraft was filled with shouts and curses until the pilot shouted the others down. “We’re pressurized, for fuck’s sake!” screamed Jesus Vigil. “If anybody shoots, it’s gonna be fucking bad news.”

“Put down the fucking gun, motherfucker!” screamed Vanni Fucci, his hand still only halfway toward his belt.

“Stop, you fucks! Fucking freeze!” Sal Empori shouted at Bert and Ernie. Bert’s hands had been rising as if he was going to strangle the civilian. Ernie’s right hand was already inside his silk sport coat.

For a second there was silence and no motion except for the jerky but not panicked swiveling of Bremen’s gun arm. He could hear their thoughts crashing around him like a storm-driven surf. His own heartbeat was so loud that he was afraid that he could not hear anything else. But he heard it when the pilot spoke again.

“Hey, take it easy, pal. Let’s talk about this.” Shallow dive. The pendejo won’t notice. Another three thousand feet and we won’t need the pressurization. Keep Empori and Fucci between the front and the civilian so stray shots won’t hit me or the controls. Another two thousand feet. “Just take it easy, buddy. No one’s gonna do anything to you.” Fuckin’ pendejo’s gonna tell me to land somewhere, I’ll say okay, and then the boys’ll take him out.

Bremen said nothing.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Vanni Fucci, glancing at Bert and glaring the idiot into immobility. “Don’t get fucking excited, okay? We’ll talk about this. Just put the fucking gun down so it don’t go off, okay?” His fingers moved onto the butt of the .38 in his belt.

Bert Cappi was almost strangling on his own bile, he was so angry. If this fucking civilian survived the next few seconds, he was going to personally cut the motherfucker’s balls off before he killed him.

“Just stay fucking calm!” screamed Sal Empori. “We’ll land somewhere and … Ernie, fuck! No!”

Ernie got his hand on his pistol.

Vanni Fucci cursed and pulled his own weapon. The pilot hunkered down and dived the aircraft toward thicker air.

Bert Cappi snarled something and lunged.

Jeremy Bremen began firing.