Dan A. Cardoza

The Numbers Stand

 

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Öztürk, (Pure Terk) had become Nouveau Riche. That meant he’d made a shitload of cash fast. 

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 He was in his early forties. He was a tall, dark and handsome sort of man. 

 

 He’d mostly specialized in high-end real estate and terminations. He’d built an empire fueled by narcissism and the need to control.

 

 He’d earned most of his crypto-currency by rubbing the right people the wrong way. He’d become a sought-after hitman since he’d moved to Pittsburgh. He’d become the antithesis to the scientific art of forensics. He’d begun his training as a young boy in Turkey.

 

 Very few knew him well if you know what I mean. The circles he ran in were circles, circles placed in concentric rings on purpose. He was “Richer than God, and tighter than a frog’s ass underwater.”  

 

 No one begrudged him. He’d made his money the hard way after all: swindling, fraud, bribes, and oh, let’s not forget, m-u-r-d-e-r for hire. 

 

 He’d become so quick at killing that his victims they’d had the time to watch themselves die. It was like a big-screen TV in their head, each channel, a channel of pain. 

 

Evil hovered over him like a dark god, a God the size of his favorite temple, Göbekli Tepe, the one in south-east Turkey. His skull's religion was silence and death, ever since he’d gotten to America.

 

 Öztürk had most of his investments tied up in the city of Pittsburg. He loved his adopted city, the city of steel, where brass meets knuckles. 

 

 He kept a low profile by investing in a string of upscale hotels and high-end office complexes scattered throughout the greater Pittsburgh region.

 

The Drive to Work

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Öztürk had secured his opulent front door, of his home, in the expensive 15206 area code. He’d lived in a gated community, one of the best in all of Pennsylvania. 

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 Öztürk gloated himself into his BMW 535i. He fired it up. 

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 On the way to his high-rise office, the one located on the highest floor of his luxury office complex, Öztürk had meandered over the contoured streets of his lovely neighborhood. It was mid-morning, unseasonably hot, even for mid-August. He was uncomfortable; the day had already swollen from the flood of heat and humidity. 

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 In the distance, he viewed his mirage. It was a lemonade stand. And so he pulled alongside the stand, parking on the street. He observed the handcrafted sign that had been made out of butcher paper and poster paint. The childlike sign had been draped over a shaky card table. Öztürk read the sign under his breath, AMRAK. 

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 Intrigued by the Turkish name, he’d gotten out of his car. He walked over to the lemonade stand. Behind the make-shift stand sat Amrak, a youngish boy of maybe ten. Öztürk looked at himself, a handsome Young Turk, selling warm juice in Ankara, Turkey, his beloved city back home. 

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 “Amrak, where is the lemonade?” Öztürk had said.

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 “I don’t sell juice. I sell numbers, nazik yaşlı. Nazik yaşlı means kind elder in the Turkish language.

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 Öztürk’s eyes were smelly ferrets. They wandered across the paper-covered table. Öztürk scent marked everything in sight. 

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He observed the three paper cups, all in a stack. Brow sweat dripped onto his stiff white shirt. He would kill for a drink. 

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 “You are selling numbers? 

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 Öztürk stood impatient. He’d killed a man for being late once. Öztürk looked back over his shoulders. A habit he’d picked up after he’d become wealthy and for being too good at his job. He thought of his idling car, the infinitesimal fractions of wasted gasoline, the welcoming coolness of the BMW’s leather seats. 

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 “Numbers, yes numbers, sir! You pick $1.00 per cup, Nazik yaşlı.” 

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 “What are the numbers for, çocuk?” It seemed like a bad investment for a thirsty customer.

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 “Lucky numbers, sir, a perfect price for perfect numbers, Nazik yaşlı. Life-changing numbers at times, sir. You merely purchase them. Use them for anything. But they are only fresh for three days, kind sir. Your luck will be apparent. Each cup has numbers. The numbers have a measure of good fortune.” 

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 Öztürk eased up on his temper. It had become an angry finger on a quick trigger. He saw himself as a boy, all the self-pity, all the rage. 

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 “I’ll try one time, çocuk. And I only want two cups, 50 cents each, max.” 

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 “No, thank you?” said the çocuk (kid). 

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 Öztürk bit his lip. The convex mark it made would end up a mirror. After all, the damned kid was having a slow morning. 

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 “You’ll be able to go home, where it’s cool, çocuk? At least you’ll have four coins that make a little noise in your empty pocket. What do you say, kid?” 

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 “I charge $1.00 per cup, kind sir. You have to purchase all three cups, Nazik yaşlı.” 

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 Öztürk caught his breath, the way he had when his father beat him on the back with the metal coat hanger for wetting his mattress, ignoring an order, for just about any reason, really. 

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 Öztürk began to seriously sweat, the kind of sweat that can leak out of the scars of cigarette burns. 

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After killing his parents and pilfering their meager savings, he’d paid his way to Sacramento, Cedar Falls, and then on to Pittsburg. Öztürk had paid 5,700 dollars to marry a green card woman in Shaler Township.

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Öztürk hadn’t intended spending a nickel more. 

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 He fumed. Then he briskly walked toward the Antarctic, the insides of his air-conditioned car.

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 “Thanks for stopping by Öztürk, Nazik yaşlı,” The boy had yelled.

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 Öztürk tugged on the door handle after beaming himself in with the engine ignition fob. He froze in place. Then he spun around. He glared at the boy, bewildered.

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 “I never mentioned my name!” he’d said.

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 “Lucky guess,” the boy had said. 

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 Öztürk stomped the pavement, back over to the table, and dug through in his pockets. He was pissed. The boy had read his custom license plates. 

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 He’d slammed twelve quarters on the shaky card table. The three cups had already been lined up. He snatched up the numbers, crushed the cups, and threw them on the concrete sidewalk. 

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 Two days later, Öztürk purchased a handful of lotto tickets. That night, while entertaining himself with all the crime on the evening news, he’d been surprised to learn that he’d won $20,000. It was those damned numbers.

 

 He’d thrown back another shot of his favorite, Smokey Ardbeg scotch. He imagined counting the tick, tick, tock of his automatic money counting machine back in the office. He slowly drifted out into the calming waters of sleep.

 

Back at the Numbers Stand

 

“Good morning Mr. Öztürk. I’ve been expecting you. I assume you’ve had a portion of good luck?”

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 “Not really, çocuk. I’d like to apologize for the way I stormed off the other day, how I’d thrown your cups on the sidewalk. I’ll take another round of cups, though. And, I will give you $1.00 for each cup, no haggling.” 

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 “The word haggling had escaped his mouth. It had been a while. It made his mouth feel like an empty cage of crows, a messy one at that. Öztürk had struggled growing up in America. He’d haggled: Toy-boy sex for a room, being a child dependent in someone’s crooked 1040 IRS scam, selling juvenile drugs for the Crips and Bloods, after all, it was easy to get out of juvenile hall, after all, and have your records expunged once you reached eighteen. 

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 “Deal, Öztürk. Three cups of numbers it is, Nazik yaşlı,” the boy had said.

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 Öztürk had smoked the soles off his expensive tires on the hot paved dance floor of the road on the way to the Bullseye Liquor store. There, he’d purchased a Mega Lotto ticket, just one. The winning ticket would have been $126 million. That would have to do. 

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 After exiting Bullseye, the doorbell jingled. 

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The clerk had shouted, “Good luck, sir.” But it was too late. Öztürk had already gone.  Öztürk hadn’t needed any luck anyway. He had numbers. 

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 One week later, on the early evening news, the Mega lotto numbers were read. There would be a local payout. The payoff had reached $326 million. 

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Drunk on his favorite scotch, the numbers had sounded so damned familiar. It was as if he’d memorized them. But his numbers were in the top drawer, at his dark office in the sky downtown.

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 Öztürk jumped in his car, elated. He had to be sure. Once again, he’d sped off in his car.

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 Öztürk nearly ran over the old woman, the one who’d looked a lot like his mother. She’d been walking their small dog, the puppy that barked, the one his mother had placed in a burlap sack and drowned in the Ankara River. That was on Elm Street near the gym.  

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On Bishop Way, he’d seen his father, at least a man that looked like his father. He’d been a red blur, standing behind the window’s sheer curtains. His throat had been cut. It had taken Öztürk at least an hour to end his father. He’d blamed the rusty, variegated knife he’d found out in the weather.

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Öztürk sped through the neighborhood, past the numbers stand where he’d seen himself as a young boy. There were no numbers, no stand. Had it been a mirage? Had the young boy been a ghost? He recalled the good times he’d had as a child when all he’d wanted was to disappear. 

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 The late evening news reported the accident on the TV big screen back in Öztürk’s empty house. 

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The high-speed accident occurred on the corner of Sutter and Stanley Avenue. One of the managers with the Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works had been interviewed. He was assigned to the Trash Collection Division. Öztürk had T-boned a garbage truck. 

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The KSPX anchor had been told that there was only one fatality. A prominent local real estate investor named Öztürk. He’d been racing ahead as if all the traffic lights had turned green. He’d run a red light through the intersection, faster than a biochemical impulse through a synapse. He was pronounced dead at the scene. 

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 By Wednesday of the following week, the Pittsburgh Biometrics Company had completed the city's authorized accident reporting. The horrible car crash had been due to the deceased driver’s texting, or at least it occurred while he’d been reading a text. 

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A text bubble had provided the answer. Öztürk’s phone had been forensically reviewed. The mystery had been solved. It was right there in the last text bubble that he’d received on his iPhone. It was an unknown sender.

The phone had nearly run out of battery life. 

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But the phone, nearly lifeless, had continued to pulse the last text bubble, and one work, the word was AMRAK, all in caps. 

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Facing the mirror, the text throbbed KARMA, over and over again, at least until the battery died and the light disappeared.

 

 

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Dan Cardoza’s most recent fiction has been published in the 45th Parallel, Allegory, honorable mention, Aphelion, BlazeVOX, Across the Margins, Bull, Cleaver, Close to the Bone, Coffin Bell, Dark City Books/Magazine, Door=Jar, Dream Noir, Entropy, Flash Bang Mystery, Gravel, Literary Heist, Mystery Tribune, O:JA&L/Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, New Flash Fiction Review, Overstock, Spelk, Variant, Visitant, Your Impossible Voice, The 5-2. Dan has also been nominated by Coffin Bell for the Best of the Net Anthology, 2021, and best micro-fiction by Tiny Molecules.  

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