God, Dwayne loved meth.
Now he stood over their table. “You’re the editor, right? Bob whatsis?”
“Who are you?” the guy asked.
Hello? Dwayne was the one asking the questions. Did this asshole not see the gun? Annoyed, Dwayne pulled the butt of it a little further from his pocket, shielding it with his body so no one else in the restaurant could see.
“I’m the guy with the gun,” he said. “That’s who the fuck I am.”
“Is that thing even real?” the guy asked.
Dwayne had forgotten his gun was pink. Now he was pissed and it was only with some effort that he was able to keep his voice conversational and low. “Why don’t I shoot this bitch in the kidney and you can tell me if the gun’s real,” he said.
“Okay, okay,” said the guy, and there was panic in his eyes that warmed Dwayne all over. “There’s no need for all that. Just tell me what you want.”
“I want you to come with me. Both of you.”
“Leave her out of it,” said the guy. “Take me.”
Dwayne laughed. “Yeah, sure. So she can start screaming her fucking head off the moment we hit the door. Now come on, both of you. And put some money on the table. I don’t need some asshole waiter chasing us down the street hollering about an unpaid bill.”
“We’re not going anywhere with you,” said the woman. “What’s this all about?”
He leaned close to her and whispered, “What this is all about is me shooting you in the face if you don’t quit stalling, bitch.”
Something flashed in her eyes like she was about to reply, but the editor guy, Bob, held up a hand to stop her. “Okay,” he said, “we’re coming.” He reached toward his hip pocket and Dwayne flinched. “Wallet,” said the guy, holding up his billfold by thumb and forefinger. “You told me to leave some money on the table, remember?”
Asshole. He didn’t know how lucky he was he didn’t get shot.
“Go on,” said Dwayne, and the guy began fishing in the billfold for money.
People were beginning to notice them. People were staring from every corner of the room. Dwayne told himself it was just the Go Fast that made him think this way, but that didn’t help. He needed to get out of there. He needed to get out. He needed to get out.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he said. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he chanted it like a mantra. He sang it like a song.
The guy put two twenties and a ten on the table. “Okay, Dad,” said Dwayne, affecting a loud, nothing-to-see-here voice, “now that you finished your lunch I’ll take you and—” he flinched at the next word, but no other word suggested itself “—Mom back home.”
The woman gave him a strange look. “Do as he says,” the guy whispered and Dwayne was happy he had that much sense, at least.
Dwayne nodded his head toward the door and Bob Whatsis and the woman stood slowly. Bob led the way and Dwayne walked close behind the woman, the pistol barrel poking her in the side through the thin fabric of his windbreaker. He put his other hand in his other pocket to make it less obvious. Still, people in the dining room stared as they passed. Dwayne tried to smile reassuringly, but that only made them turn away with expressions of disgust, so he stopped doing it.
He really needed to get his teeth fixed. Cut back a little on the Go Fast. See a good dentist.
Then he laughed softly to himself. He kept forgetting he expected to die tonight.
Out to the street. A hotel, two doors down. Some olive-skinned guy in a valet uniform saw them coming toward the Ford, which was blocking the hotel driveway, and started cursing him in some raghead language.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Dwayne in a languid voice. He reached past the woman and opened the driver’s side door of the vehicle. “You drive,” he told her. Then he came around and opened the front door of the vehicle. “You,” he told Bob, gesturing with the pocketed gun, “get on the passenger side.”
Bob did as he was told. The raghead was still circling like some annoying fly, yammering in Dwayne’s ear. “Get out of my face,” Dwayne warned him. “Go back to Pakistan, asshole.” He really felt like shooting this guy.
Now the raghead drew himself up in offended pride and spoke in heavily accented English. “I am from India, you fool—not Pakistan. And I am an American. I am American just as you are.”
Dwayne snorted. “The fuck you are,” he said. He really wanted to shoot this prick. But he let it go. Had to stay focused. Had to take care of business. So he climbed into the back door of the truck, feeling distantly grateful he’d had the foresight to steal a four-seater. He tossed the keys forward. They landed in the cup holder between the two front seats.
Dwayne freed the pistol from his pocket. “Drive,” he told the female nigger.
“Where?” she asked, holding the key.
“Just drive,” he told her, motioning with the gun. “Circle around.”
She cranked the engine, pulled out into traffic. Dwayne was feeling very good about himself.
“What’s this all about?” asked the guy. “You’re the one who kidnapped Toussaint? You’re the one who attacked Amy Landingham?”
Dwayne grinned. “I’m the one done a lot of things. Busy, busy, busy, that’s me me me.”
“What do you want from us?” asked the guy.
“Nothing from her,” said Dwayne. “I want something from you.”
“What’s that?”
“Your name’s Bob, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You work for that jewspaper, right? The Post?”
There was a beat. Then he said, “No. They fired me this morning.”
“Fine,” said Dwayne, still motioning with the gun. “You worked for them til this morning. Whatever. The point is, they know you. You can get into the building. I’ve got a video. I want to see it on their website. You get them to post it for me.” He pulled the computer disk from his pocket and flipped it into Bob’s lap.
Bob lifted the disk, studying it. “They won’t…”
“Bob. Trust me. Once they see what’s on that fuckin’ video, they’ll cream their pants to put it online.”
“But I can’t—”
“Yeah, Bob, you can. See, that’s why I’m taking your friend here. She’s my insurance policy. You don’t do what I’m telling you to, I’m going to shoot her full of holes. That’s my promise to you, Bob.”
He saw the woman’s eyes flick to the rearview, watching him. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m talking about you, sweetheart. Now, you drive us to the paper.”
“I’m not from here,” she said. “I don’t know where…”
Bob touched her hand on the steering wheel. “Make your next U-turn,” he said. “Ten blocks north on your left.” His voice was soft, like he was trying to reassure her. She nodded.
“This your old lady, Bob?”
He didn’t answer.
Dwayne shook his head. “I hate to see a white man defile himself that way. What is it about the dark meat, Bob? I mean, I can see fuckin’ one because you’re horny and maybe that’s all that’s available. But taking one out to eat? Making her your main squeeze? No, sir. Can’t do the jungle boogie, Bob.” Again the woman’s eyes came to the rearview mirror, her gaze bright now with anger. Dwayne ignored it.
“But I guess that works out for me,” he said, “her being your old lady and all. Because if she means anything to you, you will not fuck with me on this. This fucking pink pistol may look like a joke, but I am not joking. You hear that, Bob? I don’t see that video online today, this afternoon, I will shoot this bitch right in the back of her fucking head.”
He pressed the gun against the headrest of the driver’s seat to emphasize the point and was pleased to see Bob’s Adam’s apple slide up and down and an expression cross his face as though he had swallowed gone-bad milk. Then, meth gave him a new inspiration. “No,” he said, “better yet, I will rape her in the ass, then chop her to pieces and send them to you, one a day. You understand me? You get what I’m
saying here, Bob?”
“Yes.”
The woman negotiated a tight U-turn around a traffic island and for a moment, the windshield was full of cops, standing on a corner behind a traffic barricade, apparently being briefed by some other cop. Probably talking about how they were going to redirect traffic around Grant Park for the coronation of their new nigger president. Dwayne saw hope leap up in the woman’s eyes at the sight of all those boys in blue.
“Don’t even think about it,” he told her.
And then she completed the turn and the only things in the windshield were the towers of Michigan Avenue, northbound.
“I do this, you’ll let her go?” Bob was saying.
“Sure,” said Dwayne, feeling magnanimous now that they understood each other. “Why would I hold onto her after that? I already told you, I ain’t into the jungle boogie. That’s your thing.”
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” Bob asked.
“You don’t,” said Dwayne. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
“Trust you? I don’t trust you. Why would I trust you?”
Fuck, thought Dwayne. The guy was panicking. He hadn’t meant to make the guy panic. Dwayne tapped him on the top of his head three times with his gun hand, like a man knocking on a door.
“Listen to me, Bob. Listen. You do what I told you, you got nothing to worry about. If you fuck with me, that’s when you got to worry.”
“How will I know you’ve kept your part of the deal? How can I get in touch with you?”
Dwayne was startled. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He recovered quickly.
“You don’t get in touch with me,” he said. “I get in touch with you.” He pointed toward a notepad in a little contraption held to the dashboard by a suction cup. “Write your number down there,” he said.
Bob produced a pen and did as he was told. His hand shook as he passed the paper to Dwayne. “That’s a good boy,” said Dwayne, pleased by the tremors. “I see what I want to see online, I give you a call, tell you where to pick her up, and you lovebirds are reunited in time for dinner tonight. I don’t see it, and you never see her again. That’s the deal, asshole.”
Bob touched the woman’s hand. “That’s it right there,” he said, pointing. The building loomed on the left, just across the street. The woman brought the truck to a stop at a red light.
“It will be okay,” Bob told her. He spoke with such earnestness that Dwayne knew he had guessed right. The guy had a real thing for this bitch. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he told her. “I promise.”
Like his promise had one damn thing to do with it.
Her eyes were moist when she turned toward him, and Dwayne could see in their faces that they both knew how impotent Bob’s promise was. It made him feel powerful. It made him feel like God. Which, as far as these two assholes were concerned, he was.
“All right,” he said, “that’s enough. You do what I told you to do, Bob, or—”
Bob cut him off. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I know.”
He opened the door and got out without waiting for an answer. Dwayne watched him melt into the rush of people trotting across Michigan.
“What now?” the woman asked in a dull voice.
What now, indeed? Dwayne knew he should get back to the warehouse. Clarence would be shitting bricks by now. But meth, God love it, had given him another idea.
The light turned. “Hang your next left,” he told the nigger bitch.
Fifteen minutes later, the truck creaked to a stop over the oil stain in front of the brick bungalow where Dwayne had grown up. He pushed the back door open and got out.
“Wait for me out here,” he told the woman.
When he saw her eyes, he realized his mistake.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was too wired. Hard to think straight. Hard to think straight. Hard to fucking think straight.
Standing at the passenger side window, he leveled the gun right at her. He knew the neighbors might see. Fuck them. “Just joking,” he told the nigger bitch. “You’re coming with me.”
She thought about running. He could see in her face that she was calculating her chances if she just mashed her foot on the accelerator. Then something leaden came into her eyes. She knew she would never make it. She knew. The woman opened the door and came around the front of the vehicle.
“Smart choice,” said Dwayne. “Come on.”
She followed him as he crept toward the front door. He didn’t know why he was creeping. It just felt right.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Shut the fuck up,” he told her. “This’ll just take a minute.”
She followed him as Dwayne pushed his key into the lock and opened the front door.
Sure enough, his asshole brother was still sitting on the couch watching ESPN. The empty bowl of cereal was on the coffee table and he was drinking a beer. Daryl looked up in surprise when Dwayne came through the door, pulling the nigger bitch behind him.
“Well,” he said, “twice in one day. Guess we just won the happiness lotto. Who’s she?”
Dwayne lifted the pink pistol and shot his twin brother right in that big, flapping mouth of his. Right in the mouth. A couple of his teeth went flying like tiny bits of shrapnel, blood spraying over the couch. Daryl McLarty died looking surprised and Dwayne stood there bouncing on the balls of his feet, his groin heavy with an erection that could have cut marble. It made him giggle. He’d tried, he’d really tried, to think of reasons not to shoot his asshole brother. Turned out there were none.
Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah.
It was a moment before he realized the nigger bitch was screaming. Dwayne punched her in the mouth and she fell to the floor.
Her silence allowed him to hear a new voice, calling from the back. “What’s that? What’s going on out there?”
His mother. He had forgotten his mother. And he hated the idea, but what else could he do? With Earl in jail and Karen in school and ol’ Daryl sitting out here having absolutely the worst day of his life, who would take care of the old lady? Besides that, she was pretty much dead anyway, wasn’t she?
“I’ll just be a second,” he told the nigger bitch, who was writhing on the floor from the blow, still shaking her head.
He walked down the hall. Something in him made him swipe the school pictures of himself and his brothers to the floor.
“Daryl?” she called. “What’s happening out there? That sounded like a gunshot.”
He opened the door. She looked up in surprise, sitting there in bed, plastic tubing dripping off her face.
“Dwayne?” she said, making his name a question.
Dwayne grinned. “Sorry, Ma,” he said. He raised the pistol and shot his mother twice in the chest.
She had time to look down and see that she was shot, time to look up at him with incomprehension. Then she slumped and died.
“Sorry, Ma,” said Dwayne again. He closed the door behind him.
The nigger bitch had staggered to her feet and was groping toward the door when he came back into the living room. He grabbed her arm, opened the door and propelled her through. She stumbled and almost fell. Dwayne pulled the accordion security gate closed over the front door, heard it lock with a click. He hoped his brother was rotting by the time anybody found him in there.
And Ma? He thought about it for half a second, shrugged.
What the hell. Let her rot, too.
“Let’s go,” said Dwayne. “We got places to go and people to kill. Come on come on come on.”
He was behind the wheel, the pink pistol trained on his captive, as the truck roared away, tires screeching, from the little stucco house where he once had lived.
seventeen
Eighteen years Bob had worked at this place. Eighteen years.
That meant this kid now manning the security desk in the lobby had been—what?—five years old on Bob’s first day of work? Bob had nodded his way past him every morning for years. And yet
here this same kid was, treating Bob like Osama bin Laden with a briefcase full of anthrax, and here Bob was, trying to be patient, trying to be rational, trying to explain to this kid that he wasn’t a disgruntled employee—well, yes, he was disgruntled, but not that kind of disgruntled—come to shoot the place up. This was important. This was life or death. He had to get upstairs, and he did not have time to stand here arguing about it with some…child.
Not with images of Janeka in the clutches of that jumpy little animal crowding his thoughts. Yet still, like a robot in a science fiction movie, the young man kept saying the same thing: “I can’t let you through without a pass, sir.”
Sir. Like getting fired had made him a stranger.
Bob didn’t know what to do. He felt like he was losing his mind. When Doug Perry stepped off the elevator right at that moment, he could have kissed him.
“Bob?” said Doug. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“I need to get upstairs,” Bob told him. “I’ve got something I have to show you all. And Jabba the Hutt here”—he jabbed a thumb back toward the security guard who protested, “Hey!”—“won’t let me in because he thinks I might shoot up the place.”
“Something to show us?”
Bob nodded. “The guy, the skinny guy with the stupid haircut you told me about, he took us out of a restaurant at gunpoint not ten minutes ago, and gave me the disk he took from Amy.”
“‘Us?’”
“Janeka Lattimore.” Just saying the name made Bob’s eyes sting. He grabbed a breath.
“Who is…?”
“You remember the woman I told you about this morning? Sent me an email?”
“Oh yeah,” said Doug with a crooked smile. “Your long lost love. I do remember.”
Bob felt himself unraveling. He clenched a fist to hold himself in one piece. “Doug, you don’t understand me. He’s got her. That little animal has got Janeka. And he says he’s going to…says he’s going to…” It was no use. He could not force his mouth—he could not force his mind—past that point.
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