The Debt Collector’s Game

“End of the line, Ray.”

The speaker stepped into the jaundiced light of a flickering sign. Vince Morelli, the shark’s collector,slick hair plastered to his skull, umbrella dangling like an afterthought.

 Behind him, two bulked-up enforcers fanned out, their boots splashing in oily puddles.Raymond forced a smile he didn’t feel. “Tell Morales I just need time. He knows I’m good for it.”

“Morales is dead,” Vince said. 

“And his debt isn’t.”

The words struck harder than the rain. Morales,the man Raymond had served for years, defended, borrowed for, bled for,dead? “Then who owns the debt now?”

One of the goons shoved him forward. Raymond stumbled, catching the brick with his palms.

he said. “Those were his numbers, his signatures,”

Vince laughed softly. “You were his guarantor. You signed, remember? Loyalty looks really nice on paper.”

Raymond’s breath faltered. He had signed, foolishly, to prove faith in a man who had promised protection. 

Now that promise had vanished, and all that remained were predators. “Five hundred thousand, interest rolling,” 

Vince went on. “You got it?”

Raymond shook his head. “You know I don’t. Not yet.”

Vince tilted his head, studying him. “Then I guess we collect in kind.”

The first punch came from the right,a sudden flash of knuckles that cracked his jaw and snapped his head sideways. He tasted blood, metal and rain. 

The second blow folded him in half. The alley became a tunnel of sound: boots, thunder, his own breath breaking apart.

He heard Vince’s voice as if underwater. “Always liked you, Ray. You worked hard. Should’ve picked better friends.”

Raymond gasped, trying to find words. “He... he said the money was clean. I only moved it.”

A kick silenced him. His body curled in reflex, every nerve screaming. He felt the cold of the pavement seep through his clothes, 

The smell of rotting trash, the reek of gasoline from a distant taxi queue. One of the men leaned down. “Boss, you want us to finish him?”

Vince hesitated. “Nah. He’s already finished. Let the city take what’s left.”

Their footsteps receded. The rain thickened, washing the blood from his face in red threads. He tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled uselessly. 

The streetlight above him hummed, then died, plunging the alley into half-dark. For a long moment he lay there, listening to New York breathe,

A siren’s wail, a horn’s impatient bark, life moving on without him. He whispered to the night, voice slurred, almost a prayer. “Why did I trust him?”

No answer came. Only the rain. Then, faintly, beneath the storm, a rhythm began,his heartbeat slowing, a drum fading at the edge of silence. 

Raymond thought of his mother’s tiny apartment upstate, of the letter he’d never mailed, of Morales’s smile across a mahogany desk 

when the papers were signed. “We rise together, Ray.” 

He had believed him. A cough racked his body. Something cracked deeper inside. The world blurred; neon smeared into watercolor. 

Somewhere above, thunder rolled like distant applause. He closed his eyes. The pavement was cold, but it felt honest.

Rain turned gentler, a whisper instead of a roar. The city lights blurred behind the mist, and Raymond Richmond lay motionless in the alley’s embrace.

His breath shallow, his heartbeat uneven. The pain came in waves,sharp first, then dull, then distant, like the sea retreating from a broken shore.

He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there. Minutes, maybe hours. His thoughts bled in and out of lucidity, chasing fragments of voices.

“You’ll make it big, Ray. You’re smart, loyal. People notice that.”

Morales’s words, years ago. Words that had meant something then. Now, loyalty had left him penniless, and “smart” was a joke whispered by dying men.

He tried to move. His body refused. Pain lanced through his ribs when he breathed too deeply. He rolled to his side, 

spitting blood, and saw the faint shimmer of a streetlamp at the alley’s mouth. Somewhere beyond it, life continued, laughter, footsteps, 

umbrellas flicking open, the ordinary rhythm of a city that didn’t pause for one fallen man.A groan escaped him, low and raw. “Somebody... help...”

No one came. A passing shadow paused at the alley’s edge, then moved on. The world had no time for broken things.

He let his head rest back against the concrete. It was oddly peaceful, the quiet between thunderclaps. 

He could hear the rain ticking against a metal trash can lid, the far hum of an air conditioner. He thought, absurdly, that the sound reminded him of coins falling into a jar.

“Debt, he thought. It always comes due.”

A faint smile tugged at his split lip. It was almost funny,the servant paying for his master’s sins. Almost poetic.

Memory rose again, a bright shard in the dark: Morales leaning across his office desk, cigar smoke curling through gold light. “You believe in balance, Ray? Everything in life’s a ledger. People, trust, time,they all go into the books.”

“And what if the books never balance?” he’d asked.

Morales had laughed. “Then someone like me hires someone like you to make sure they do.”

Raymond laughed now, the sound wet and broken. “Balance.” That was the word. The cruel arithmetic of the world.

He had spent years collecting other people’s debts, smoothing over missteps, delivering envelopes, making phone calls in the shadows so Morales’s empire ran clean. And for what? For this.

He reached weakly into his pocket. His fingers brushed against a torn photograph,the last thing he owned that wasn’t mortgaged to someone else.

A young woman stood beside him in the picture, her smile wide, her hair caught by the wind. 

Claire. He’d left her behind when Morales promised him the future. She had begged him to quit. “The man’s poison, Ray. You don’t owe him your life.”

He’d laughed then. “You don’t understand how the city works.”

Now, bleeding in its gutter, he wondered if she had been the only one who did. Rain pattered on the photograph until her face blurred. 

He held it anyway, a talisman of something he’d lost before he realized its worth. A sound echoed down the alley, metal shifting, maybe a trash can lid, maybe something else. 

He froze, breath caught. The silhouette of a cat slunk across the far end, eyes glinting, tail slicing the air. It paused to look at him, unblinking, before vanishing into the dark.

Raymond exhaled, the faintest laugh scraping from his throat. “Even the strays are freer than me.”

Another cough. More blood. His vision swam. He knew he was fading. The edges of the world pulsed and folded inward. 

The rain became distant music, the ground a soft cradle. For a fleeting second, he thought he heard something,a whisper, low, mechanical, almost human. 

But no. Just the city. Just the wind. He blinked up at the slice of sky visible between the rooftops. 

Clouds drifted across a pale moon, and the light spilled across the alley like silver debt ink. “If I could start again…”

He didn’t finish the thought. His eyelids sank. His hand, still clutching the photograph, fell limp against the wet pavement. 

The city’s noise dimmed to a single note. Thunder rolled one last time,soft, distant, like a judge closing his ledger. And then there was silence.