Red-Stained Wall

by Panagiotis Karaferis

The thunder shook the building. The teacups were shaking, causing the sound of porcelain clashing. Aunt Helen was sniffing on a handkerchief while I was pouring the tea. The pounding rain was darkening the atmosphere even further, chilling our nerves, as the wind howled and challenged the repetitive sound of the rain.

When the cups were finished, I covered the tea pot and placed it on a table next to the large dining table. Then, I sat on the armchair and said, “people come and go. Don’t weigh yourself with grief, you have children to raise.”

Aunt Helen gave me a terrifying look, “How can you speak like that about your father? Doesn’t his loss make you even the slightest sad? I can’t understand how you can be so insensitive about it.” She almost burst into tears again.

I lowered my head in a frown. “That’s not what I meant. If you want to believe that it would be better for him to still be alive, disgracing his own image and the image of his family even further, then you can believe what you want. You can’t stop and pause time to grieve every time someone dies. Especially someone like him!"

Aunt Helen assumed an even more aggressive stance and with anger in her voice, after throwing her handkerchief away, she replied: “You speak of family, yet you’ve never embraced ours. You’ve never followed our tradition and our ethics. You are our disgrace!!!”

She stood up and wore her coat. While putting it on though, she appeared to have found something in her pocket. She pulled a letter out and threw it on the table.

“Get that to your sister. Power is still off, there.” Then, she headed for the door.

“He was a criminal, never forget that!" I yelled as she was leaving.

“Aren’t we all?” She replied before shutting the door behind her.

She was right about everything. I was very heartless about the death of my own father. But how couldn’t I be? Since I was a little kid, he pushed me to become like him. Hiding the real self inside, he appeared as a respectable businessman. But soon, his secretive and criminal personality became more and more apparent, as our family was losing wealth and power. As the streets of Athens grew darker and darker, he wanted to adapt. And adapt he did. He died a drunkard. A drunkard Mafioso.

The rain was calming down. No more thunder could be heard. I finished my tea, put on my coat, shoved the letter in one of the deepest pockets and headed out. I should at least deliver this letter to my sister. Maybe she will not follow his footsteps if she finds out what had happened to him. I decided to walk, so I got out and headed out in the dark street. The rain had stopped.

The dark streets were still filled with water. Puddles had formed in the cracks on the paved roads. The pavements were slippery and drops of rain fell from the roofs of every building, which combined with the thunder and a sky filled with dark clouds, completed the atmosphere.

I hadn’t taken an umbrella with me. I felt like I was blessed with the gift of never getting wet. Every time it was raining, it would just stop when I got out, until I took shelter. Not this time, though.

The rain had already started again when I was halfway there. I was now soaking wet. The rain had penetrated my coat, my pants and my shoes. The only thing that managed to escape was the letter. Deliberately placed in the deepest pocket of my jacket.

I was walking fast down the street. A very steep downhill street, and I could feel I was about to fall. I had almost made it to the end where my confidence must have taken the best of me. I slipped and fell on my back.

I laid there with the rain falling on my face and now the letter was definitely wet. I got up after a sigh of disappointment, when a car pulled up next to me.

It was a police car, probably a patrol. As a window pulled down, a strong face appeared behind the steering wheel.

“Get in!” he said. Initially, I hesitated but the smile on his face convinced me that he was trying to help. I walked around the car and got in. I told him where I was going and he just drove me there. The police officer didn’t say a word during the whole ride, thank God for that. I wasn’t in the mood for talking and especially to a police officer. I was feeling rather sleepy, but my wet clothes wouldn’t let me calm down. Still, thank God for this man who helped me. Without him, I would probably get sick in this rain.

The officer parked the car outside the old house, and I let myself out back into the rain. I looked around for a bit, like I was making sure that no one was following me, and, as the car drove away, splashing the water, I knocked on the door. I heard footsteps on the other side; it sounded like high heels. And as the door opened, the full figure of my sister, remarkably well dressed in a black dress for no apparent reason, greeted me. The ironic smile on her face, which was covered with heavy make up, drove me mad as always.

“What?” she spat out in an even more-ironic-than-her-expression voice.

“Wipe that smirk off your face, and why are you dressed like that at this hour?” I said as I stepped in to avoid getting even more wet. Then, I pulled out of my pocket and gave her the letter. It had managed to stay dry, despite the whole adventure in the rain.

“What’s this?”

“Father is dead, the funeral is on Saturday, you can’t miss it.” Time for me to return the irony….

“How? What? When?!” she immediately started panicking.

“ Don’t know, don’t care. I believe that everything he left behind is your responsibility now, so... Good Luck!” I covered as much of me as I could wth my coat and headed back out, slamming the door behind me.

Don’t know, don’t care. That’s how much I hated him. I walked down the narrow road to get a taxi back home. The rain had stopped and it looked like that was all the misery for the day.

Don’t know, don’t care. It took me quite some time to realize what I had just said. One of the most famous criminals of the underworld, my father, was found dead in an empty bar. No one knew why or who did it, and not much investigation was going to shed light into this case until someone in the family would decide to start unraveling the mystery. Maybe it was alcohol poisoning that would save us all the trouble. Well, frankly as of now, I’m going home. Home, to my own life…

The rain was still pounding outside. I had just gotten out of the shower. I lit a cigar and sat on the couch, looking outside the window, lost in my thoughts. I don't usually smoke but sometimes a cigar calms me down. I'd do it more often but my highest priority about myself is to stay healthy. As I exhaled a puff of smoke, I raised my head, face up, sending a cloud of smoke that slowly diffused into the room. Then, I closed my eyes and thought.

So, my father is dead...

So, my family is in chaos...

But so, I am free!

This is the way out that I wanted. An escape from a life that I so much loathed to follow. A life that my father forced me to live.

I can seize it. I can leave, I can go ... I can live!

The only issue left suspending was what I would leave behind. I wish it would be nothing, but instead it is a gap. A hole where my father should be.

As he had taught me, never leave a trace, an imperfection behind you as you go, it will always come back to haunt you. So, I put down the cigar and went upstairs to get dressed. I wore a black three-piece suit. Dressed in black from neck to toe, and not before lighting the cigar again, I left the house and off to the city centre I went.

To close the gap ...

The rain stopped hours ago, and only the wet roads, the small drops falling from the roofs of the buildings, making their own distinct melodies remained. The sun had already set, since it was dead in the winter these days. I had just arrived at the bar where my father was found dead; “Liquor Paradise” it was called. The neon light sign was still on, even though the bar was closed. The door, on the other hand, was wide open, and it was definitely crammed with policemen inside.

I walked through the entrance and was greeted by an officer. “You shouldn’t be here, this bar is closed,” he ordered as he lifted his right hand pointing at me. “It’s Ok, he’s the victim’s son. Let him in!” a voice was heard in the back. It sounded familiar to me.

The officer lowered his gaze and let me in. “Go head. I’m sorry”, he said. I nodded as I walked past. I’d never been in a crime scene before and this was hardly it.

The body was still lying face flat on the bar counter, with a shot glass in his right hand… he hadn’t even let the drink go. You’d expect all the CSI and the police to be around, investigating, taking pictures. But nothing like that. Just an officer looking at the body with his arms crossed below his chest. He was the guy who asked his colleague to let me in but also he was the guy who gave me a ride in the morning, in the rain. That’s why his voice sounded so familiar to me. I walked next to him and looked around.

“Hey, you are allowed here, just because he’s your father but you can’t touch anything. He hasn’t been checked yet, but after taking a look at his record we will probably lean towards alcohol poisoning,” he told me in a steady, raspy voice.

“Was there anybody around when he died? Didn’t anybody do anything?” I asked.

“No, he was all alone. He was found the next morning like this.”

“What about the barman? Wasn’t he here? He must have served him the drink.”

The officer stared at me like a child who had just done something awful and is ridden with guilt.

“Are you telling me that none of you thought of that? You can’t be that incompetent, can you?” I exclaimed.

The man gave out a sigh of disbelief and walked towards the body. “Screw the others. I’ll take a look myself,” he mumbled.

He started looking around, until he found a hole in his shirt. A bullet hole. He turned the body round and unbuttoned the shirt. It was a clean hole through his skin. It had been cleaned, so blood wouldn’t flow. He then removed his coat and found an exit wound at his back.

“Jesus, what did they shoot him with?” he whispered.

“The coat has no bullet hole which means that he wasn’t wearing it when he was shot,” I said and the officer turned round and looked at me.

“You still think this was alcohol poisoning?” I asked.

Officer Kostas, as it turned out his name was, spent a few minutes looking at the wound trying to figure out what it was that shot him. Not many guns can shoot through a man’s chest and come clean on the other side; it would have to be something really expensive. No stains, no dirt, nothing, as if it had just gone through dry cleaning. But, when I smelled it, it had a weird smell on it. Garbage was the most likely candidate for it. Kostas walked up to me:

“He was shot with a really expensive gun, and they tried to clean it up. As lousy as they did, this wasn’t a simple execution. They had been waiting for him outside and then they shot him.”

“He’d only taken his coat off when he was inside, so he must have been shot while leaving. Which means that he was drunk and he left the building from the back door. They have a private parking lot for him. We should take a look,” I said.

“You should be a detective. What do you do, again?” he asked.

I didn’t answer and just headed outside through the back door. He followed.

Once I was outside, I slowly followed the steps I assumed that my father had walked in order to get to his car, looking around for clues.

“There! A cigarette butt, definitely his,” I said and I kept walking.

“And here, garbage on the ground.” I pointed at a few bags of garbage lying next to the garbage bin.

“So?” asked Kostas.

I made him smell the garbage and then the coat and it matched. His coat must have fallen there. I looked around a little bit and I found a gold trinket under the garbage bin.

“Lousy job, indeed…” I said as I ducked to pick up the item. “This is his watch, he has it in his coat’s right pocket. Or rather, he used to have it there, until it fell here…It’s not the first time it fell. He had lost it more than once in his drinking adventures. Anyway, this must be where his coat dropped or was thrown. So, this is where he was shot.”

“Possibly… but look up at the wall! The bullet went through but there is not a drop of blood on the wall,” the police officer said.

“They must have cleaned it up,” I concluded.

“So… what we do know so far…” officer Kostas tried to recap the story. “He was shot here with an expensive gun, his coat fell on the ground, his watch went missing and the guy who shot him tried to clean everything up but failed horrendously.” Kostas moved his hands in a weird way while he was trying to piece things together.

“It was an amateur job, done by someone who used to have a lot of money; hence the good gun, but he probably lost it; hence the not hiring a professional to do the deed for him,” I claimed.

“Quite a deduction. You know who did it?” he asked me.

“Yes, but we have no proof. Keep looking around or call someone smarter to do it for you,” I ordered him.

Officer Kostas gave me an aggressive look and walked away.

I stood there looking at the wall that should have been red-stained. It was white and clean.

I was drinking coffee while looking out of the window. It was sunnier than yesterday, no rain but light clouds. I wasn’t thinking of much. I didn’t really know what to think of, since I knew who had done it, but I couldn’t do anything about it. It was this old guy who used to own an alcohol manufacturing line; he used to be my father’s right-hand person, until he got mad enough, so my father had to drive him out of business. That was it for people like him. He could end someone’s whole career in less than a day. And he did it, more than once. Murphy’s law, I guess. Eventually my father got what was coming for him.

But the issue was that I couldn’t do much about it. It was up to the incompetent officer and the police now. And they didn’t really do their job properly. I wanted to go to the bar again. Maybe I could find something else as well.

Just as I was about to leave, there was a knock on the door. I answered. It was officer Kostas. “I interrogated the man you said that did it. He was quite nervous, but we still need evidence. We don’t have enough.”

“Straight to the point, eh? Ok, I was about to go to the bar again. Let’s go there together and find your evidence,” I said.

“ You aren’t going anywhere. You are not qualified or have any permission to help with the investigation. You have to stay here and I’ll take care of everything,” he returned.

“Not going to happen,” I spat. “You clearly lack the skills to carry out a proper investigation. I figured out more than your entire police department. And I’m not going to back down until we lock that man in a cell!!”

“You don’t have the authorization to be involved in the investigation. You can’t help!”

“Yes, I can,” I said firmly.

I knew that there was a legal way to get things done. It took me some time but I convinced him and officer Kostas went off to get the papers done. On the way to the police station, he dropped me off at the bar.

I spent quite some time looking around but I couldn’t find anything. The bar was out of bounds and locked. They had taken the dead body to the morgue. So, I spent a few minutes looking around the back streets outside the back door, but still I couldn’t find anything.

So, I ended up looking at the white wall again. All alone. I was thinking and thinking, but nothing. I sighed and turned round. And then...I froze....

My heart skipped like ten beats and I stood still.

Not blinking, not moving, not breathing.

The old man who shot my father was standing there pointing a gun at me.

I looked in his eyes and he looked in mine, when a tear popped up and started falling from his eye.

And he pulled the trigger.

And I fell on the floor.

And the white wall was white no more....

...as a red stain covered it from bottom to top.