Men in Trench Coats

The journalist doesn’t hear the shots. The attached silencer ensures that. And oblivious to the muzzle flashes, dimly visible through the grimy windows, the journalist walks to the front of the old building, his blasé attitude clueless in the drizzling rain, and about to knock...

‘Freeze, prick!’ a chilling voice behind him demands. ‘Hands up.’

Cold and hard, a pistol presses against the back of his skull, ‘Get ya hands up.’

The journalist instantly obeys.

‘Down on your knees.’

Again, he complies, dropping to his knees one by one. He is roughly pushed, ‘Against the door. What’s in the bag, chump?’

‘I—It’s a bottle.’

‘Of what?’

‘R—Rum.’

‘Going to a party, are we? You’re at the wrong place, buddy,’ says the man. He inspects the paper wrap before placing it on the ground. Then gives his captive a quick pat-down, finding no weapons. ‘What the hell-ya doing here?’

‘I—I followed you.’

‘Yeah, tell me something I don’t already know.’

‘I—I’m looking for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Some guy—’ The barrel presses painfully into his skull. ‘B—By the name, Rodger.’

‘By the name Rodger. Well, that really narrows it down,’ scoffs the man.

The journalist realises he needs to explain. ‘Miller, no Rodger Muller, something like—’

‘Müller?’ The man fiercely asks. ‘What do you want with him?’

The journalist attempts to turn, ‘L—Look—’

The pistol shoves his forehead against the weathered wood. He desperately blabbers, ‘I—I’m willing to pay for info—’

‘Not at eleven o’clock, oh-night, ya not,’ declares the man. He cocks the hammer on the pistol and coldly says, ‘Goodnight, chump.’

‘NO!’ screams the journalist. Wanting to throw up, visions of being horribly dumped into a cold, shallow grave with a bullet hole to his skull now flash through his terrified mind. ‘Please don’t kill—’

‘Give me a reason—’

‘I’m willing to pay.’ He’s almost crying.

‘Explain?’

‘I—I have money. And the bottle, for your troubles.’ And sobbing like a baby, ‘I—I’m—m, w—willing to p—pay—’

‘Oh, jeez.’ The man realises he’s dealing with an invertebrate. Then asks, ‘Okay. What for?’

‘F—For some information.’

‘What else?’

‘That’s all. H—Honest. Look, I’m legit. I’m a journalist—’

‘Huh, that’s a new one,’ the man chuckles. ‘You better not be shitting me.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Journo aye,’ the man says. ‘Don’t dare move. Don’t even scratch your arse unless I tell you. You got that?’

‘Y—Yes.’

‘Now, slowly with your left hand. Your ID.’

The journo reaches around and pulls out his wallet, holding it above his head.

Activating a dim torch, the man takes it, flips it open single-handedly, skilfully confirming the ambivalent claims. ‘Hmm, your reptile membership. Miles Grant. I guess you are who you are.’ He pockets the wallet. ‘What else you got?’

Grant pulls out a roll of bills. The man whistles at the grease,

‘What, do we have here?’

‘As I said—’

‘Yeah. You’re willing to pay,’ he says, taking it. ‘Anything else?’

He is handed a black diary and pockets it. The pistol moves from his head as the hammer unlocks; Grant momentarily relaxes. Then, retrieving the bottle, the man says, ‘On ya feet. But keep ya hands up.’

Grant struggles, yet rises. Then, tenses again. The weapon pressing into the middle of his back, he’s urged forward.

‘It’s open, Journo. Go inside. Slowly!’

Grant awkwardly turns the doorknob. The door swings open with a long squeak, revealing a dark hallway. He’s pushed forward, as indistinct shadows creep along the walls. The door hauntingly squeaks again, closing behind them.

A naked bulb hangs swinging from the ceiling, casting dim, moving shadows. The same decor covers the walls as the hallway. Old and peeling. In the corner, an old wooden table with older-looking chairs sits.

The man gestures toward an old cupboard. ‘There’s, some glasses in there, help yourself.’ He places the bottle on the table’s surface. ‘It’s not often I have such gracious guests.’

Then, sitting, he continues aiming the weapon and slumps back into his chair. Reaching into his pocket, he locates Grant’s belongings and empties the contents onto the table. Scrimmaging through the assorted finds, he takes the diary, and a small photo of a young woman falls free. She’s somehow familiar. He begins thumbing through the pages while holding the weapon.

The writing within is petite and precise. In most places, the lines and figures are regular and perfect; this isn’t Grant’s handwriting. It possibly belongs to a woman. Perhaps the one in the photo. In a list of names, one, ‘Agent Steven Rosenfeld,’ emerges. Along the margin, a comment, ‘Contact this man if anything happens to me,’ is written. An arrow points to the name. The man glances at Grant, wondering, ‘What is this about?’

‘So why don’t you oil the door hinges?’ Grant asks, attempting conversation.

The man replies gruffly, ‘Huh! Let’s me know when some customer enters me joint, uninvited.’

Grant places the glasses beside the bottle. The guy indicates a vacant chair with a wave of his handgun. Grant sits opposite, as the man continues thumbing through the diary. Placing it on the table, the older man looks unnervingly at his guest. He slowly, methodically, unscrews the silencer from his handgun and places the weapon on the table within easy reach. Removing

his hat, he promptly inspects his cowl before returning his icy gaze. He meticulously arranges his black, greying, and unkempt hair. Placing his trademark fedora on the smoothened table surface, his old trench coat opens to reveal a shoulder holster. A black tie hangs loose around his neck in contrast to the slightly ageing and yellowing shirt he wears.

His sharp eyes bore into Grant. The silence becomes unbearable.

Grant alarmingly notices smears of blood on the warped wooden floor. A cold shiver runs down his spine as he realises he is in the presence of a stone-cold killer.

‘Are you going to pour us a drink each?’ the killer asks drily. ‘Or wait for the bottle to evaporate.’

Grant, his nerves unsettled, hastily reaches for the booze and starts pouring. However, he only manages to spill the contents onto the table. The older man clamps his fist, vice-like, around Grant’s shaking wrist, saying, ‘Better take this off you, before you waste it all.’ He sneers at the younger man. ‘There’s something I don’t get.’

‘What’s that?’

‘What’s worth the paint stripper, to risk getting a bullet?’

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone named Miller—’

‘Or Muller. You said so outside.’

‘I was told you might know him.’

The older man leans forward, ‘Now, maybe I do, then maybe I don’t.’ The intensity back in his eyes, ‘What do you want with this, Miller?’

‘I was told he knows a guy named Rosenfeld.’

‘Rosenfeld?’ asks the man drily.

‘You took a photograph, from me.’

The man lets go of Grant’s wrist and pushes the photograph across the table.

‘I need him to find this girl,’ explains Grant, apprehensively holding the photo up. ‘I was told he’s good at that.’

‘Missing girlfriend, is she?’ asks the other man coldly. ‘Listen, son. If you can’t keep up with her, don’t waste my time.’

‘Waste your time,’ asked Grant. ‘What—’

‘How did you find me?’

‘Find you.’ Grant suddenly realises, ‘Your—’

‘Rosenfeld. It ain’t exactly tattooed on my forehead.’

‘I’m good at my job.’

‘Nosy reptile,’ Rosenfeld said, giving him a hard stare. ‘It’s going to cost you. You sure she’s worth the trouble?’

‘Trouble?’

‘How do you know she hasn’t run off with some other, hitch?’

‘Shit. It’s not like that.’

‘So tell me, Journo. What’s it like?’

‘She’s my little sister, Aimee,’ Grant blurts out. ‘She went missing several weeks back...’

Rosenfeld, staring at him, conjectures, ‘And there’s been no trace of her, no ransom note, no leads at all. Has there?’

‘No, nothing. Not a single lead.’

‘And the police are completely baffled by the case.’

‘Yes, how do you know?’

‘Let’s say I am familiar with such—I hate to break it to you, kid. But trafficked girls—’

‘No,’ says Grant defensively. ‘She wasn’t kidnapped.’

‘How do you know?’

Tears in his eyes, Grant explains, ‘There’s no record of her. The police. The government. Anybody who should have info, records. None of them have anything on her. It’s like she never existed. Apart from,’ he indicates the diary, the photo.

‘So there’s no official evidence she ever existed?’

Tearfully, Grant nods his head.

‘I see,’ says Rosenfeld thoughtfully.

‘Yeah, I guess you think I’m crazy as well. Even my dad—’ Grant looked defeated. ‘He insists, he never had a daughter.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m the only one who remembers.’ In anger and frustration, Grant reaches across the table, picks up the money, the diary and the photo, ‘Sorry I wasted your time.’

Rosenfeld grabs his arm, ‘Sit down, kid.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m beginning to believe you.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Gut feeling,’ answers Rosenfeld. ‘But tell me. How much are you willing to sacrifice to find her?’

Grant shrugs, ‘Anything.’ And nodding at the roll says, ‘It’s all yours if you take the job. Plus more when—’

‘Okay.’

Grant nods understanding, as Rosenfeld leans back in his chair,

asking, ‘How did you really find me?’

Grant points to the diary. ‘Your name is in it. Was my sister’s. She says—’

‘Yeah, I read it,’ confirms Rosenfeld. Reaching over, picks up the photo, ‘She’s attractive. She’s what, I guess, about seventeen?’

Grant nods his head, ‘Around that.’

‘But it’s going to cost you.’

Grant looks elated. He reaches for—

‘Ah,’ says Rosenfeld, leaning forward on his elbows, ‘Now here’s the thing, kid.’

‘What thing is that?’

‘I’m not talking about bacon.’ Yet Rosenfeld pulls a bill from the roll. He carefully folded the note and placed it into his shirt pocket, saying, ‘Consider this a down payment. You’d better hang onto the rest.’

For a long second, the younger man says nothing. Eventually, he asks, ‘Okay. What do I have to do?’

Rosenfeld pulls a cigarette packet from his pocket. And removing a coffin nail, taps the cigarette on the side of the box, then offers one to Grant, who respectfully turns down the act of goodwill.

He watches Rosenfeld light the smoke and inhale. Rosenfeld’s eyes close in ecstasy, and when they open...

The door squeaks loudly, and Rosenfeld, holding it ajar, waves toward the stairs. ‘After you, Journo. We have work to do.’

Grant, peering down the steep stairwell, hesitates. ‘What kind of

work?’

‘Nasty work.’

‘How do I know—’

‘If I were going to do you in, you’d be dead already.’

‘That’s reassuring.’ His heart pounding, Grant descends the staircase.

‘You’re bloody well welcome!’ answers Rosenfeld. ‘But don’t step in the blood.’

‘What blood?’

Slipping, Grant’s arm is seized.

Rosenfeld comments, ‘Don’t want you falling and adding to the mess. Do we?’

‘No,’ answers Grant, unsure what mess he spoke of. As he reaches the bottom...

‘There’s a light switch on the right.’

Fumbling for the switch, Grant manages to turn the light on. The black dissolves into yellowish gloom. And he is met with a grizzly sight. On the floor lay two bodies on a black plastic sheet. The stiffs, wearing identical black suits, but from a better tailor than Rosenfeld’s, sport bullet holes in the foreheads. Grant realises with sickening dread what the “nasty work” involves.

‘Told you it would cost you,’ says Rosenfeld with a sinister grin. ‘Don’t lose it now, kid.’ He grabs a couple of plastic aprons and gloves hanging from the wall nearby. ‘Here,’ he says, tossing a set to his accomplice. ‘Put these on.’

‘What?’

‘This is going to get messy, kid.’

‘You don’t expect me—’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘No,’ challenges Grant. ‘No way in hell.’

‘No?’

‘Not until I know—’

‘Okay. I guess I owe you that. But I haven’t got all night.’

‘All night?’

‘So you help me clean this shit up, while I explain what’s going on. Got that!’

With dread and realising he’s trapped, Grant reluctantly nods.

‘Okay.’

‘S’pose I should start with my real name.’ Rosenfeld pauses, reaching for the shoulders, ‘Grab him by the ankles.’ And continuing his story, they struggle toward a low bench, ‘Anyway, my real name, the one I was born with—’

‘Jeez,’ says Grant, ‘this guy full of rocks?’

‘Not easy moving a stiff, is it?’ jeers Rosenfeld. ‘They don’t cooperate.’ He continues his life history. ‘As you already guessed, people called me Miller, sometimes Muller, depending on how bright they were.’ He places the body on the bench. Then he helps Grant with the legs. And returns for the other corpse. ‘Grab him the same way. But, most couldn’t get it around their thick skulls, how to pronounce Müller.’

‘That your real name?’

‘Detective Rodger Müller, it was at one time. I know. A cop.’

Rosenfeld finds a couple of clear face shields and throws one to Grant, ‘Here. It’s going to get—’

‘Messy,’ reflects Grant. ‘You normally use your cellar for this?’

‘This’s the first time.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘These bruisers arrived just before you did,’ Rosenfeld explains.

‘Asked me the wrong questions.’

‘So, you killed them.’

‘They were a little uncooperative.’

‘Now you’re doing your own autopsy?’

‘You’d rather I call the coroner’s?’ Rosenfeld puts on his face shield.

‘No. But, wouldn’t cutting them up, like—’

‘You watch too many movies,’ Rosenfeld says sourly. ‘But yeah.

Once I find out what makes them tick, we’re disposing of them.’

‘Charming,’ replies Grant. He places the face shield on.

‘Hand me that saw over there.’

Grant looks around and finds a Tanon saw. He hands it to Rosenfeld.

‘Here, hold his head steady.’

Grant edges toward the stiff, and seeing the head-shot—

‘What are you waiting for?’ asks Rosenfeld. ‘An invitation.’

‘I’ve never—’

‘What, don’t tell me you’re never seen a stiff before?’

‘Never like this one.’

‘You’ll get used to it, kid,’ Rosenfeld boasts with an evil grin. ‘Now hold his head for me.’

‘Why, what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to give Frank and Stein here a lobotomy,’ says Rosenfeld, holding the saw. ‘Believe me, if I’m right about this, you’ll realise the necessity. Now hold his head.’

Grant clamps his hands on the lifeless face and turns his head away. Rosenfeld positions the saw and starts cutting around the stiff ’s crown. ‘That’s when I changed my name to Rosen—actually, that’s the name they gave me.’

‘Who?’

‘Division-9?’

‘Never heard of them?’

‘Good,’ says the agent, looking pleased with himself, as Grant watches him, pry a piece of scull away with a pair of pliers and toss it to the floor. ‘Means if you had, some arsehole ain’t doing their job properly.’

Trying not to vomit, Grant asks, ‘So you joined division—’

‘Oh no, kid. I didn’t join, I was recruited.’

‘So I guess that means, I’m—’

‘Recruited? You help me,’ says the agent, pointing the bloodied pliers at himself, then at Grant, ‘I help you find your sister.’

Rosenfeld removes the top of the skull. The room fills with a pungent odour. Grant turns his face away, doing his best not to retch, ‘Oh jeez, what’s that s—’

‘Well done, lad. You’re looking better already.’ Rosenfeld slaps Grant on the back with a bloodied glove. ‘I’m amazed you lasted that long.’ Then, peering into the skull, "Yeah, just as I thought. Have a look"

‘You’re joking?’

‘Jeez, kid. He’s dead.’

‘Ah—’

‘Listen, you’re going to have to trust me.’

Slowly, Grant circles around and takes a look. ‘What the hell?’

He isn’t looking at a human brain.

They hear a noise from upstairs, and a voice calls out, ‘Steve, you down there?’

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ says Rosenfeld. ‘You keep an eye on these two.’ And he leaves Grant alone, with the grisly specimens.

Miles Grant removes the bottle from his lips; Rosenfeld, having retrieved it from upstairs, along with a man he called ‘Doc.’ Grant splutters and coughs and immediately returns it to his mouth.

‘It takes a bit of getting used to,’ says Rosenfeld, not talking about the rum.

Grant coughs again.

‘You’d better take it easy with that,’ says Rosenfeld, taking the bottle. He takes a swig himself, then hands it to the Doctor.

‘Small sips until you get acclimatised,’ says the Doc, immediately handing it back to Grant. The Doctor, dressed in a lab coat, smeared with blood stains, returns to prodding the brain of the decapitated stiff.

Grant points the bottle toward the makeshift operating table, ‘What the hell are they?’ He takes another sip of rum.

‘NHE’s,’ answers the Doctor.

‘NHE?’

‘Non-human Entity,’ Rosenfeld explains.

‘I guessed that when I looked inside—that is a head, isn’t it?’ Grant asks.

The Doctor grins at him, resuming his examination.

‘Shit. Did anyone else see that?’

‘You mean this,’ said the Doc, prodding at the NHE. The fingers clenched. Then relaxed. ‘It’s a galvanic reaction from metal,’ explains the Doc. ‘Like a frog, in High School science. Similar thing. He’s quite dead.’

‘You’ve heard of the Men in Black,’ asks Rosenfeld.

‘MiB?’ answers Grant. ‘Yeah. But I thought that was all, you know, urban-legend bullshit.’

‘Hey Doc,’ asks Rosenfeld after taking a drink. He points the bottle toward the NHE, ‘Does that look like urban-legend shit to you?’

‘You’re looking at one,’ explains the Doctor.

‘Two of ’em, actually. What’s left,’ explains Rosenfeld, proud of his workmanship. ‘Third lot we’ve managed to catch. But I’ll let the Doc explain the science. I’ll only balls it up.’

The Doc looked at Grant, his eyes enlarged by the hands-free magnifier he wore. He grinned, making him look ghoulish, then began... and finished his thesis.

Grant looked from the Doc to Rosenfeld, who, in his trench coat, took another sip of rum. Then at Aimee’s photo, asking, ‘Jeez-sis, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?’