After the girl lay dead on the floor and Walter began to throw a temper tantrum, Albert slumped frozen. He paid no attention to Walter. With his right hand he pulled back the girls blindfold. Her eyes miraculously seemed to be have said that she was at peace. She did not appear to be afraid like she had for the last few hours. Albert took his index finger and thumb and pulled her eyelids shut. That was when Albert started to feel a rumble in his stomach. His throat felt terrible. As though microscopic organisms were having a trillion-man march up his throat towards his nasal cavity. Albert stumbled out of the locker. He felt weak. Walters rants and screams suddenly had the volume turned down. Maybe it was the gunfire. Once outside the locker Albert grabbed a piece of the wall. Not since the time Albert had to torch his Fifth Avenue had this happened. The toilet was too far. Albert bent over. With an involuntary flex of every muscle from his abdomen to his jaw, Albert threw-up.
Albert lifted his head and whipped his mouth. Suddenly he was not in the warehouse anymore. He was in the Commissioners office sitting in that terrible chair.
“You killed her didn’t you?” The Commissioner said frankly.
Albert realized that while he was telling the story to the Commissioner he at some point stopped talking and only continued to tell the story to himself.
I did kill her, Albert thought. But that was what he was supposed to do. Walter was supposed to kill the girl. Walter always had to kill the younger witnesses or their kin.
Not until that night did Albert realize that Walter wasn’t just killing off the young ones. He was torturing them. The kind of horrors that await the blackest soul in the darkest pit of hell couldn’t hold a torch to the things Walter had been doing.
Had been doing? Christ! How many had there been?
The thought made Albert hang his head in shame. For his blindness there was no redemption.
The Commissioner stared across the desk waiting for an answer that would never come. They both had nowhere to go from here. If the furnace at that warehouse of death could talk it would say, “they were all in here until their ashes were collected and thrown to the wind.” But the furnace at the warehouse can’t talk. Albert could talk, however, if he did right now it would be only him that gets put away for good. The objective was to put away Walter and Mel. But without a sworn statement from Albert himself Mel could not be dragged into court. Albert did not want to put his name out their as a conspirator against his soon-to-be former employer for one second.
I’d become a dead man. Albert ran several senario’s in his head. All but one ended with his own ashes being scattered to the wind. It seems that without a body, a smoking gun or a witness statement you’re trying to catch air in a fish net.
“What’s the solution Albert?” The Commissioner asked. “You’re clearly not going on record for crimes committed at Mel’s request. We have no bloody glove or prints. What do we do that could put away Mel and… (ahem)… Walter?”
Albert thought about it long and hard before hand and the answer hit him like a swift kick to the balls.
Tony, Albert thought. If he can’t pay, and I know he can’t, he has to die. Bring the boss the head, bring the police to the boss, and…
“Tony.” Albert said to the Commissioner.
“Ah, yes! The snitch. What can he do?” The Commissioner asked.
“He can die.”
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