Free The Accidental Existentialist by Joshua Graham

 
     
     
     
     
    There could be nothing
stranger than looking at your own casket
adorned with wreaths and an American flag on the day of your
funeral. Warm sunlight flowed through verdant oaks, blanketing the
gravesite with a golden lattice. Sparrows sang a song of Spring,
celebrating new life, a new season. For all the world.
    But not for Chris Connor.
    From behind the tinted windows of a
black limo, he looked on through binoculars as they lowered the
casket into the ground. Unjustly beautiful and dressed in a slender
black dress, Marlena held little Robbie’s hand—an image evocative
of John F. Kennedy Jr. as a child, saluting his father’s
coffin.
    I may as well be dead, Chris thought,
swallowing the tumor in his throat. But this was the only way.
Unless Khrenikov believed him dead, Marlena and Robbie would never
be safe. No way around it regardless of what chief of police Benson
said. And there was no way in hell Chris could have taken this
matter up with the FBI or any other agency. The reach of
Khrenikov’s tendrils knew no bounds.
    Chris winced at the blast of the
gunshots. Three rounds, seven rifles. Then the bagpipes. Marlena
dabbed her eyes as Colonel Masterson handed her the folded flag.
Robbie kept looking down into the hole in the ground where the
coffin meant for Chris lay. “Daddy, daddy,” he cried, but from this
distance, Chris could only see his boy’s lips quiver, his two
little fists wringing the tears from his eyes.
    His only remaining child.
    Fatherless.
    Chris couldn’t watch any
more.
    He rolled up the window, put on his
sunglasses and chauffeur’s hat and started then engine. This plan
hadn’t been well thought out, but it had to be executed. Now, as he
drove down the winding road of Cypress Hills, he’d take the Jackie
Robinson out to the LIE and disappear somewhere in Great Neck, or
Little Neck, or hell, maybe skip town altogether before devising a
strategy for taking Khrenikov down once and for all. But like the
many heads of Hydra, the mythical serpent dragon, cut one off, and
two more grow back. And at this point, Chris didn’t fill his mind
with Herculean delusions.
    Clouds white as wool hung before their
powdery backdrop. A Peterbilt roared by, its driver flipping Chris
the bird for only driving 70 in a 55. Then a candy red Prius cut
him off. Too numb to get angry, Chris simply ignored them
both.
    He was alone. Had to be for now. But
he’d be back. He made an oath to heaven, to the Almighty. Chris
would see to it that Khrenikov and his entire network would not
only be stopped, but pay for what he’d done as well.
     
     
    It’d gotten to the point that all he
wanted was someone to look him in the eye, greet him, just
acknowledge his existence. Alas, such was the burden of
invisibility. How much more of this isolation he could
take?
    Soaring above him in the
ash colored sky, a seagull let out a plaintive cry. Chris sat on a
bench with peeling green paint and stared into the murky waves of
Sheepshead Bay. He hadn’t shaved for three days, wore tattered
jeans and let his hair become disheveled. The affectation of a bum
was deliberate, especially because he now sat in the lair of
the Bratva —the
mob controlled by Khrenikov. But this was the last place they’d
expect to see Chris, if they even bought his staged
death.
    The time on his watch:
1:47 PM. Soon Rayshkin would arrive and one of two things would
happen. He’d continue to accept Chris’s cover and lead him a step
closer to the ever elusive Khrenikov, or Chris would soon be —to
borrow phase from the Bratva’s Sicilian counterparts—sleeping with the
fishes.
    He set down the brown
paper bag in which his coffee cup lay nestled and picked up his
copy of the Times. The front page headline confirmed the successful conclusion
of the staged death business.
     
    Lt. Christopher Conner gunned
down
    Russian Mafia suspected
     
    The report went on to discuss
everything he and Masterson had leaked to the press, the police