Dirty Diaries
by
Bayo David
Copyright 2012 Bayo David,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1133-0
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Chapter 1
The young man switched off the light and drew the dirty curtain to block any illumination from outside. Looking around, he decided the room was dark enough to force anyone in it to grope around. But to achieve the pitch black he desired, he put on his dark glasses, nodding his satisfaction. That was how he wanted the world to be, as it was before God said, “Let there be light”—a formless place where brutality, wickedness, and injustice reigned. He closed his eyes behind the glasses and allowed himself a mental picture of people young and old, weak and strong, innocent and guilty, stupefied by repeated blows, screaming and crying in his beloved darkness. Only the smart ones would survive.
He sat on a worn-out gilt chair in the center of his dusty, empty room, staring into an unseen future, weighing the possibility of what was echoing in his mind. “I can make you a motherfuckin’ millionaire in, eh . . . months, six at most.” A dark part of his mind said it wasn’t possible; the even darker part said it was. A man he’d met by chance, who’d claimed to be his biological father, gave him that assurance.
The man’s soft voice sounded in his head again. “I know what you want, Schoolboy. I have master spies in your brain. You want money? I can make ya a motherfuckin’ millionaire in . . .”
He groaned as he realized how meaningless his life would now be without his mother—even if he did eventually become a million-dollar man. The thought of his late mother quickly injured his emotions, causing the little excitement in him trundle into a twinge of anger. His groan was the only sign of life in the dark room.
He tried to push aside the image of his dear mother, sitting and resting against a wall covered with dried blood from her head downward. About twenty people were staring at her lifeless body. He was only ten when she was murdered in the club where she spent her leisure time. He’d cried like the baby that he was. Nobody had taken care of him. Mama never told him he had any family except Judas, his father, who was in prison with eight years left of his sentence. The boy that he was then had been taken in by his friend’s family, hoping that one day his father would find him after his release.
But that didn’t happen.
He sat motionless in his dark room, not feeling anything. If his senses were functioning, he would have noticed that he was footsore and parched—and, to his shame, that he was crying for the first time in sixteen years. He could only think, and he continued to do so. He carefully made a mental assessment of his life.
When he was twenty, he’d started killing everyone he’d suspected of killing his mother. He’d carried out a secret, intelligent, but highly illogical investigation, during which he’d come across nine people who Mama had spoken with, seen, or visited three days before her death. And like a professional, leaving no trace of himself, he’d murdered them. Most of them had been ordered at gun point to drink five or six bottles of alcoholic ferimo after which they were thrown from the tops of various multistory buildings. Mama had taught him not to forgive and forget.
He cleared his throat, concluding that his life was a success, that it couldn’t have been better. He adjusted his slipping glasses, wiped his greasy face, and continued to think.
During his twenty-four years of existence, he’d been involved in things that would give the cops hell, things they wouldn’t have been able to prevent even if they’d known about them beforehand. He’d carried out several kidnappings and bank robberies. His fortune rose when he was asked to help get some chaps who had the talent to see clearly in the dark. And he’d promptly found two good albinos. He’d found buyers for stolen goods. He’d been to prison twice to serve terms of a few months.
If no one would praise him, he would hail himself. It was true that he’d sent twenty-three innocent people to their graves in his effort to get two guilty ones—although he didn’t actually get them. But he suggested that if people of his ilk were honored, he was worth some gold medals. He gathered his lips to one side of his mouth in what he called a smile, then inserted a long, thin toothpick into it and began to stab his gum, whistling through the teeth and swallowing the blood.
He could have been two million dollars richer, but his loot had gone as quickly as it came. His hobbies were gambling and watching pornography. His name was Kane Duncan, and he stood six-feet-one. Disliked by most females on sight, he hated men.
Some months earlier, he’d vowed to retire from active crime after he thought he would have his way with a successful politician who was running for governor in six months. This fellow was having an extramarital relationship with a teenager. Kane, a very patient human being, had hidden behind their window with a powerful camera intermittently over four months to observe their love making. He’d taken a lot of pictures. The effort, Kane calculated, could fetch him twenty-five thousand dollars.
Mission accomplished, he presented the photographs on a Monday morning. It was business as unusual because, to his surprise, the politician told him to go to hell and show them to the press. In the elevator, while Kane was counting his losses, the time and the resources he’d invested, he was called back.
“So what am I to do with all these?” the politician asked as he glanced from one embarrassing nude picture to another, not minding the presence of his secretary. He cried. “My opponents paid you to do this, eh? Jim sponsored this trash, eh? You want to blackmail me?”
“Gimme forty thousand and you’ll have everything, including the negative.” Kane brought out more copies from his black duffel bag.
“You must be joking.” He turned to his secretary, who seemed to be rearranging a desk. “Damn it, excuse me. You can see I’m dealing with a stiff ass here, couldn’t you?” Directing bloodshot eyes to Kane, he barked, “I said you all must be joking—you, Jim, and whoever sent you.”
“I wouldn’t come all the way from Clackamas Estate to crack a joke.”
“You must be out of your mind. You just burst into my office, show me some collections and tell me to part with four thousand?”
“I said forty thousand,” Kane corrected him.
“Ah! You’re a crazy fool.” A sudden spasm of fury swept over him. He was banging everything. “How would you like it if we started chasing each other with guns and cutlasses?”
“Are you ready or not?” Kane was adamant.
Two hours passed before they settled on twenty-thousand dollars.
Kane collected the money and turned over the photographs and their negatives, although he kept back some, which he would save for when he was broke.
He actually returned with them two weeks later. The politician was alarmed when he saw more copies displayed on his table, with Kane quietly pulling enlarged, framed copies from his bag. The man became weak and talked through clenched teeth, stammering with eyes closed, saying that he could go to hell and publish it or show it to anyone, this time meaning it.
Kane was frustrated. He had to complete one more operation before he allowed himself a voluntary retirement at twenty-four. Just one more. After a fleeting moment thinking about what he could do, he decided to rob the