Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom

Chapter 4

The Executioner, like all normal people, hated Los Angeles. But, technically, his rental car was driving him to somewhere in Orange County, not that anyone bothered to make the distinction anymore – it was now all one big wretched Third World mega-city. Its dysfunction was, however, the main attraction for the man in charge of the debt collector network that The Executioner worked for.

While the debt collectors in The Executioner's network were, on paper, independent contractors that got paid per successful client, the man at the top was still indispensable to them. His contacts inside the American government and various overseas police forces kept the supply of clients flowing. However, this man, known only as Marv, was wary of the protection he enjoyed from certain individuals within the government. He knew that if he lost this protection and wasn't able to purchase a new high level friend, he may find himself in prison for 20 years.

And this was where Los Angeles came into the picture. This city was beyond the reach of American federal law enforcement, and the California state government had not been a relevant force in Los Angeles for quite some time. As for the city government, it was too busy with managing an increasingly difficult city to assist federal or state authorities. So Marv was quite happy to make his home here.

Unfortunately for the debt collectors, Marv was very old-fashioned and he liked meeting face-to-face with them. This meant they had to regularly visit Los Angeles and choke on its pollution while wading through what felt like, at times, a war zone.

The Executioner looked out the car window and wondered what would kill him first: the traffic, the extreme pollution, or a stray bullet. More likely it would be some infectious disease, as relatively few people in Los Angeles had been vaccinated for anything in a quite a few years. The combination of impoverished and uneducated Latin American migrants with no access to health care and the over-educated white pseudo-intellectual underclass who believed that vaccines were a corporate plot resulted in Los Angeles being the worst city outside of Africa for outbreaks of a variety of diseases, plagues and viruses.

But The Executioner didn't know anything about that. He never bothered to research his trips to Los Angeles. He only made short trips from the airport to wherever Marv was living at the time, and then back to the airport for a quick escape from the city.

At Marv's ugly and oversized house, the door was answered by yet another strange and beautiful woman of indeterminable ethnicity who spoke English haltingly. She seemed nice. Smiling, the lady of unknown origin introduced herself.

"I Marv's girlfriend, Rebecca. Marv in office. You want beer?"

"I'll trade you a few pronouns and an indefinite article for that beer, thanks," joked The Executioner, taking advantage of the knowledge he had gleaned from the very helpful remedial English app 'An Introduction to English Grammar for Learners of Bahasa Indonesian Grammar, 7th edition.'

Not getting the joke, but laughing politely at what she hoped was something light-hearted, she ran off to fetch The Executioner's beer.

The Executioner walked into Marv's office and greeted him warmly.

"Hey Marv."

"Hey man, welcome back to the Land of the Free."

On the desk was an old plaque. The Executioner read it out loud.

"Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom. 2022 MVP. Marv the Impaler."

"Yeah, one of the guys I worked for ages ago had it made for me as a joke. It was an employee of the year sort of thing," said Marv. "Don't worry, I didn't actually impale anybody. It was just a nickname. We were civilized back then...all we did was harass student loan defaulters and their families over the phone and online. But you like it? Jealous?"