An Unfinished Boy - The Wheelman

MIKAL’S FATHER RETRIEVED AN ICE-COLD BOTTLE OF Stoli from his miniature office fridge. He poured a drink to his son, who’d been so eager both to please his father and pursue his art at the same time. Sitting in some recording studio in downtown Philadelphia, along the waterfront, were the tapes of Mikal’s unfinished rock album. Mikal’s father had paid $18,500 for two weekends of studio time, complete with professional engineers and mixers. It had been a late birthday present for Mikal. He had been so thrilled, and was due back in the studio the following weekend—it had to be postponed because of a performance at the shore. Mikal had just turned twenty-two.

Now, Mikal’s father considered that $18,500, and considered how he’d pay ten—no—one hundred times that amount just for the bitter pleasure of renting out a large soundproof room with concrete floors, two meat hooks, and a large industrial hose for cleanup afterward. He wanted those three bank robbers run through electric meat grinders and the remains doused in gasoline and burned.

Mikal thought about sending someone into the studio to take the tapes, just so that the robbers could listen to the music. In the spare moments when they weren’t screaming for their lives.

Forty-five minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was his employees. They had discovered that someone was sleeping in Mikal’s friend’s dormitory room. And it wasn’t Mikal’s friend.