Max,Ch 2
I'd stayed in worse motels. Everything worked just fine. There was cable, at least. I flipped around. There were a few crappy TV movies, some softcore porn, and a whole bunch of other assorted garbage. I decided to watch some news to kill the time. It was at least better than the alternatives. A few bits of local news played. The anchor was a little bit too enthusiastic about the Midtown Chipmunks' 'sweeping victory in the regional baseball championship'. They're just grade-schoolers, they don't know any excitement except what's brought on by an excess of Kool-aid. Now for national news. Updates on that rascal Max Payne's killing spree. "The body count has not risen for two whole days, and police believe that suspect is dead. Even so, the handling of the situation has been given entirely to federal discretion. New York City public health officials have cautioned residents in the areas near the rampages not to touch bodies that have not been discovered by police, and to report them immediately, to avoid being infected by the decomposing corpses. More details on that la-" I didn't really care to hear the rest. I had been trying to get away from all that, and the last thing I need to find out is that I killed more people than the city can find and deal with. Not something I wanted to know.
I stuffed my feet into my shoes and went to the fridge. The truck drivers had brought a couple six packs of beer with them, and they weren't going to miss a bottle. We'd been on the road for a good for a good five or six days, and I ended up getting along fine with the two of them. They were out at the moment. They hadn't made any plans on what to do, or where to go, but I had a pretty good idea where they were going to end up. We passed a strip club about five miles outside Midtown, and these guys were bored truck drivers, after all. I'd last heard from Woden about two days ago. He called the room at the last motel, and he seemed perfectly content that I just wander around the country until I had found a nice burg to settle down in. Patient man. Still, I wondered how patient he would be if he knew that I had that tape. I had brought my VCR in from the truck and connected it to the grainy old TV. I popped the cap off my bottle and put in the tape.
I wasn't able to drink a drop of that beer. Apparently, it really was just a sex tape. One-eyed Alfred getting it on with Candy Dawn. Some jerk-off who stayed here before must've turned the volume all the way up, because the late Ms Dawn must've been screaming in pleasure loud enough to give the farmer across the street a boner. I clicked the mute button and began to fast forward. It was astonishing. Positions that I didn't even know existed, and positions that I wouldn't have guessed a man his age could pull off. I just could not help but keep watching. I've never liked porn, and I especially disliked this. But something just wasn't right. Alfred Woden had used me to destroy Aesir, Valkyr, and most importantly, Nicole. And yet here he was, in a sleazy hotel, fucking a V-head junkie one third his age. It just didn't fit at all. I un-muted the TV and turned the volume down low. They breathed heavily, gasping in unison as he pumped his hips. "Oh Alfie…" she moaned. "Alfie, Alfie, Alfie!" Alfred pressed his head into her chest, and began to yell, "Nicole! God you're amazing, Nicole!"
I leapt up and grabbed the television. Warm tears burned down my face like acid as I pulled it off the stand and dropped it to the floor. I grabbed the lamp off the nightstand and broke it over the TV. A brief rain of sparks bounced down onto the floor and winked out. I had been used. Nicole Horne was responsible for what happened to my family, and she had died for it. But she had died for it back in the bar at Jack Lupino's hotel. The woman in the copter was just a decoy, yet another of the many people that Nicole and her accomplice had used as tools for their own personal gain. But her accomplice, Woden, was still alive. After I killed Horne in the bar with Rico Muerte, he must've altered his scheme, use me to cover all the tracks leading to him, and stick Horne with all the blame.
There was a knock at the door. I turned the TV over. It was still on, the cord pulled tight where it ran to the wall. He and his late partner in crime laughed and yelled in the throes of their orgasm. The door flung open. I grabbed the bottle, and brought it crashing down on the screen. The screen cracked, flickered green, and crackled out. I fell to my knees. My pain renewed itself. Dark scars on my soul reopened and bled anew. Finally, I gave up all hope. Alfred was going to find out, and there was nothing I could do. He and his two drivers were the only people in the world who knew who I was, and where I was. I was in the palm of his hand the whole time, and all I had fought for was a lie. And his drivers were now standing right in front of me, reaching into their pockets.
"What the hell were you just watching?", one of them asked. I didn't even try to compose myself. I figured I could pass myself off as very drunk, and there was a movie that pissed me off, or something. Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of time. "What were you just watching, Max?", he asked again. I began to talk incoherently, slurring about all these damn romantic comedies they make these days. They weren't buying it. The other driver took his hand out of his pocket. There was a miniature revolver in his hand. I still had a broken bottle in mine.
He stepped slowly and carefully over the broken television to the VCR and pressed his thumb to the eject button. I didn't wait. I rushed him and stabbed the broken glass into his neck. He retracted his hands and held them to his neck, dropping his gun. The other one was still surprised. I snatched the gun off the floor, and shot him in the chest. He jumped with the shock, and stood there for a moment, as he looked down at his shirt, which was dampening with an expanding blot of blood. Finally he snapped out of it and jerked a gun out of his shirt toward me. Only a split second to react, I squinted as I pulled the trigger. A black dot popped open in his forehead, and he fell against the wall and slid to the floor. I grabbed the truck key off his belt and dashed out of the motel, past screaming housekeepers and fleeing tenants. Throwing open the door, I climbed into the driver side and turned the ignition. I pulled out of the parking lot as fast as I could in the loaded truck, and raced down the dark highway toward Midtown. The rush of adrenaline was an unwelcome feeling, a physical reminder of all the fighting I did to kill a woman who was already dead. On that lonely road, my heart felt as black as the night outside, and the screams of my wife and daughter echoed in my ears as they had so many times before.