by Joe Ide
“What are you doing?” he said.
“We’re early,” Crowe said.
“Early for what?”
Crowe had that scary gleam in his eye. “I found a new one. Number seventeen. You won’t believe it, Warren. She’s a nurse! I love those fucking uniforms. I wish hers was white, but it’s a shitty green color.”
“What’s so special about her?”
Crowe laughed. “She’s got a twin! Yeah, no shit! Her sister looks exactly like her. I saw them at the Capitol Mall. They were holding hands.” He smiled at the memory. “I pretended to bump into them just to get a look. It was amazing! Except for their hair they were—”
“Identical?” Warren said.
“Yeah,” Crowe said, not getting the joke.
“So? What’s the big deal?”
“Don’t you see? You kill one of them but you’re actually killing two!”
“No, you’re not, you’re killing one,” Warren said.
Crowe sulked. “Forget it, okay? You have no fucking imagination.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s time.” They reached an isolated stretch of Hanover Avenue. It was a short block. No houses, only commercial buildings, the kind that sold plumbing supplies and wholesale furniture.
“It’s a shortcut for her,” Crowe said. “She goes this way, makes a right and she’s home. Otherwise, she’d have to go around.” Crowe was an asshole, but he did his homework, Warren thought.
They drove past an empty lot, nothing there but construction debris. The only light was from the windows across the street, fluorescents left on for the night. Crowe drove around the block, turned into an alley and parked at the rear of the lot.
“This time you do the work,” he said. “I’ve set everything up, everything’s ready. You grab her, I’ll be waiting in the car.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
“It’s not bullshit. You have to pull your weight, okay? You can’t just do the fun part, you have to—she’ll be here any second, Warren! Go! Hurry!”
There was a dumpster near the front edge of the lot. Warren got out of the car, ran and took cover behind it. A woman was coming up the street. You’d never know she had a twin; she looked like everybody else. She was wearing a puffy vest over green scrubs and carrying a big bag. There was no one around. They hadn’t seen anyone since they got here. Crowe had picked a good spot. The woman was talking on the phone, chatting and laughing. You should look where you’re going, Warren thought. He was less nervous about grabbing her than he was about Crowe, his fat ass waiting for him to fuck up.
Warren lost focus for a moment—the woman was right in front of him! He made his move a moment too soon. She was parallel, not past him. She turned her head and saw him coming. She didn’t scream, she ducked. Warren hugged air and she darted out from under him. He reached out, grabbed the collar of the vest and yanked her back. Her feet went out from under her, but Warren held on. The vest was pulled up to her throat. She had both hands on it so she wouldn’t choke. She started screaming and kicking her legs. He couldn’t hold on and get to his Bowie at the same time.
“Shut up!” Warren hissed. He saw a truck was two blocks away. Its silhouette was big and square, its engine loud and guttural. The bitch kept fighting and screaming. “SHUT UP!” Warren hissed louder.
Crowe was in the alley, watching from the car. He nearly laughed. The bitch ducked and Warren almost missed her. What a fucking moron. Now he was trying to drag her onto the lot. Not easy. She was on the ground and he had her by the collar. Deadweight. He should have hoisted her over his shoulder. Crowe heard a truck. It was close, maybe on Hanover. Oh, shit.
“Hurry, Warren, hurry the fuck up!” Crowe shouted into the windshield. Warren couldn’t hear him. He was still struggling with the woman, taking quick glances at the truck, getting closer, the engine noise louder. There was a line where the light ended and the darkness began. Warren had to get the woman across it before the truck’s headlights hit him.
“HURRY UP, WARREN!” Crowe screamed. Warren had half her body over the line. She was twisting, trying to turn her body over. “Here I come!” Crowe said. He leaped out of the car, the truck noise instantly louder. Warren was jerking and yanking the woman’s collar. You could feel the truck’s vibration through the ground. Crowe was running. “Hurry, Warren! Hurry!”
Warren pulled the woman over the line. A few seconds later, the truck went by. The woman had stopped screaming. Warren probably hit her. Crowe stood in the middle of the lot, teed off, breathing hard and shaking his head.
“Can’t you do anything right?”
Warren began dragging the woman again, stopping every few yards. He was wrung out and slimy with sweat. “How about giving me a hand?” Crowe looked at him disgustedly.
“Do it yourself, asshole.” He went back to the car.
A few days later, Crowe got into his stupid bar fight and went to jail. Warren was relieved. He had the shack to himself, he could do what he wanted and didn’t have to listen to Crowe’s endless bullshit. Then he realized he wouldn’t be able to kill again until Crowe got out. The need was strong and Warren couldn’t wait. Besides, who needed that prick anyway? You know what you’re doing. He went out by himself, trolled Village 5. It was on a list of Sacramento’s worst neighborhoods. He picked up a hooker, knocked her out, took her to the place and did his thing. It was good, he thought afterward, but it wasn’t great.
He went out again, nabbed a housewifey-looking woman. She fainted so it was easy. He had her halfway into the trunk when she opened her eyes. She’d been playing possum. She kicked Warren in the face and nearly escaped, but he gave her a judo chop and knocked her to the ground. He had to fight hard to get her back into the trunk. It was exhausting. He took her to the place and did his thing.
Warren went back to the shack and smoked a cigar-sized spliff. That could have turned out bad, he thought. Maybe he needed Crowe, and he missed the shared adrenaline, the insane laughter, the looks they exchanged when they were covered with blood.
While Crowe was in prison, he married a woman named Shareen. She was heavy and sweated a lot. She didn’t know how to do anything except fry baloney and nag. Warren couldn’t believe Crowe would marry a lump like that. Crowe said living in an actual house, eating fried baloney sandwiches and watching Netflix with Shareen was better than living in a shack with his half brother, eating frijoles out of a can, and watching the same six channels because they couldn’t afford cable.
When Crowe was released, he found out about Warren’s killing and the near miss. He called a bunch of times, yelling and complaining, his voice like a hacksaw cutting through a lead pipe. Warren wanted to go out again, but Crowe told him no. The time “wasn’t right.” More bullshit. The asshole was worried he wasn’t the boss anymore and didn’t want you doing stuff yourself. To hell with it, Warren thought. You don’t need him anymore. You already proved it.
He went out by himself again. He prowled the streets of South Haggenwood and Ben Ali, other names on the worst neighborhoods list. It was closer to the shack than Crowe would have liked but so what? Warren wanted a woman. Didn’t matter if she was old or young, hunchbacked or blind and in a wheelchair. The goddamn wolf was chewing through his rib cage.
He drove around for hours but couldn’t find a woman who was isolated enough to grab. He kept driving, craning his neck like that would help him see better. He was about to go home—and there she was, walking down Curson. There were streetlights, but they were far apart. Everything in between was dark or had a bunch of shadows.
The wind was gusting hard. The girl was wearing a hoodie cinched tight around her face, hands in her pockets, leaning into the wind. Anything that wasn’t tied down was rustling and flapping, trees bending, shit tumbling down the sidewalk. There was an old man on the other side of the street trudging along, head bowed, eyes down. A kid was up the block a ways, riding a bicycle in circles as if to say fuck the wind. I’m here, goddammit.
Warren knew he should wait
until the street was completely deserted, but who knew when that would be? The wolf was climbing out his chest with its fangs dripping, and then Warren was the wolf, and he was going to eat this bitch down to her socks. He pulled the car up behind her and got out fast. He clamped one hand over her mouth, put the Bowie knife to her throat and told her to be quiet. But the stupid bitch started fighting anyway, thrashing around, trying to pry his hand off her mouth, going “MMMMFFF MMMMFFF.” He could barely hang on to her.
“Cut it out or I’ll cut your goddamn throat,” he growled. She bit his hand. He yelled, but he didn’t let go. The old man was pointing at them and looking around for someone to tell. The kid was riding in circles around them and yelling for help. And then a black guy in a do-rag came running right at them.
“The fuck are you doing?” he shouted. Warren let the girl go and flashed the Bowie. The guy stopped but he wasn’t scared. He said, “You done fucked up altogether.”
Warren backed away. Then two more black guys joined the first one, and they kept coming, challenging, gesturing with their hands, talking shit like black guys do. Warren reached the car. He got in quickly and put the knife on the seat beside him. He’d left the engine running, but he still had to put it in gear and release the hand brake. Before he could do it, one of the black guys smashed the windshield with a brick or a rock, the glass shattering. The second guy was getting in the passenger door. Warren grabbed the knife and slashed at him, cutting him across the shoulder. The guy screamed and fell back. The third one opened the driver’s-side door. Warren tried to bring the knife around, but he banged the blade on the steering wheel and dropped it. The guy tried to drag him out. Warren yanked himself away, released the brake, put the car in gear and stomped on the gas, running over the one who broke the windshield, all of it happening in seconds.
The third guy wouldn’t let go. He had his feet on the door sill, one hand on the door, the other clamped on to the steering wheel. Warren fought him for control, the car swerving, heading for a building. He hit the brakes hard. The guy was thrown forward into the door, releasing the steering wheel as he was thrown back and onto the pavement. A crowd was running toward the car, screaming and throwing bottles and rocks. Warren put the car in reverse, cranked the wheel to straighten out, the crowd right outside banging on the windows. He stomped on the gas and sped out of there.
Warren got home, scared and shaken. He took a couple of nembies, smoked a joint and had a few beers. He knew he’d messed up. Next day, the news was everywhere. For the first time in his life, Warren bought copies of the Sacramento Bee and the LA Times. AMSAK SUSPECT STRIKES AGAIN. SEARCH FOR AMSAK SUSPECT INTENSIFIES. The story was on the local stations and CNN as well.
There was good news, if you could call it that. Warren hadn’t killed anybody and the police didn’t have a license plate number. The description of him was vague. Warren drove the car out to the desert, wiped it down and left it in a dry creek bed far from the highway. He had a bicycle strapped to the bumper. It took him half a day to reach a bus stop and it nearly did him in.
Crowe came over to the shack. He was really pissed. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted, waving the newspaper. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? How could you be so stupid?” Something about that word had always bugged Warren. Of all the words there were, that one reduced you the most.
“Don’t call me stupid,” he said. Crowe was in his face, aiming his fat finger at him.
“You are fucking stupid. Do you want to go back to jail for a hundred years? Christ, how could you be any more of a screwup?”
“I said don’t call me stupid.” Warren slapped the fat finger away. Crowe was red-faced and sweating.
“You do as I say!” he screamed. “It’s my operation. I was the one who brought you into it! Remember that, stupid?”
Warren’s hand shot out and grabbed Crowe around the throat, squeezing hard before pushing him away. Warren wasn’t as strong as Crowe, but he was strong enough. Crowe stumbled back, coughing, tripping over the coffee table and falling on his ass. Warren laughed. Crowe got to his feet, his mouth open, his eyes shining like there was a fire inside his head. His knife was on the floor. He picked it up. He looked at Warren and made a sound, too deep to be human, like something coming from a cave or a crack in the earth. Warren drew his own knife. He carried it with him all the time just like Jim Bowie.
“That’s my knife. I gave it to you,” Crowe said.
“Well, I’m not giving it back, asshole.” They looked at each other. If he takes a step forward, it’s kill or be killed, Warren thought.
Crowe said, “You wait, Warren. You just fucking wait,” and he left the room.
The next day, Crowe kept bitching. They couldn’t use the car anymore, they’d have to wait a long time before they could kill again. The cops were everywhere. Crowe blamed him in a hundred different ways—but he didn’t call him stupid.
Warren stayed home, three days, four, five days, then a whole week. The wolf was pacing, snarling and tearing at his stomach lining. The goddamn thing was hollowing him out. He couldn’t eat or sleep, tempted to slip into the night and find a girl. But reality was too big and loud to ignore. He could get caught, go to prison again. He’d spent eleven years of his life locked up in a cage. He never got used to it, never adapted, scared out of his mind every second, waiting for somebody to stab him or a bunch of gangsters to drag him into the utility room. Going back terrified him. He’d kill himself before that happened. But the wolf didn’t give a shit. Fear and common sense had no effect on the beast. It was so big now, Warren could hardly breathe. He walked around the shack, the lights off, raving, stabbing the air with the Bowie, his urges like violent orgasms.
Warren didn’t know how it happened, how the wolf turned its anger on EX. He thought about what happened back then, playing the scenes in his mind, each frame a slash with the Bowie. EX had to be gutted, strung up and hacked to death. He made the mistake of calling Crowe.
“We could do it while we’re waiting for shit to cool down,” Warren said. “EX lives in Coronado Springs, it’s like a four-, five-hour drive. Nobody’s gonna connect that with us.” Crowe said no, absolutely not. He was on parole, and he was wearing an ankle monitor. He couldn’t go anywhere except to work and back. Anyway, they couldn’t make plans for a strange town. They’d have to do it on the fly, a sure way to get caught.
“There’s no reason to do this, Warren,” Crowe said.
“I have to.”
“Why? You keep saying that, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t care.”
“No, I forbid it!” Crowe shouted. “What if you get caught, huh? What if they offer you a deal? We’ll knock ten years off your sentence if you tell us who your partner is. You’d give me up in a second!” Warren didn’t say anything. Crowe was right. He’d have no problem flipping over like a blueberry flapjack if it came to that. Warren hung up, but Crowe called him back.
“You’ll mess everything up like you always do!” he roared.
“Not always,” Warren said. He wasn’t good at arguing.
“Yes, always! You’re not good for shit! All you do is get in my fucking way! And now you’re going to do something stupid like this? Yeah, you heard me. You’re stupid and you’ve always been stupid and you’ll fuck this up because you’re a stupid goddamn idiot.”
“I don’t give a shit what you say, I’m going,” Warren said. Crowe was screaming as the call ended. When this was over, Warren thought, he would scalp that asshole and cut out his Adam’s apple so he couldn’t talk anymore. He was going to Coronado Springs to kill EX and nothing was going to stop him.
Warren hated his room at the Treeline. The bed was buckled in the middle. It was hot and suffocating and the smell was bad. The heating-cooling thing under the window didn’t do anything but rattle and blow dust around. He needed more beer. Maybe get a Styrofoam cooler and some ice so he wouldn’t have to drink it warm. He put on his pants and a sleeveless sweatshi
rt. He’d go to the liquor store, move around a little, get some blood flowing. Then he’d go looking for EX. The thought of it excited him.
He left the room and saw a girl, two doors down, jiggling the key in the lock and cursing. She was wearing a blue baseball cap, jeans and an old flannel shirt. He wondered what her tits were like. Warren felt the wolf lunge, jaws snapping shut an inch away from the girl’s neck. She’d never know how close she came to getting dragged into his room. Maybe later, he thought. When it was dark.
Chapter Twenty
Side Heading
Isaiah was still shaken. That he’d nearly killed himself was devastating. He’d always been in control of himself. Maybe not his emotions but his actions, his decisions. Now he was subject to impulse and delusion. He couldn’t trust himself. A knock on the door startled him. He crossed the room and opened it. A young woman was there, haggard and pale. She had the beaten, beseeching look of someone in terrible trouble. Go somewhere else, he thought. We’re all out of kindness, patience, sympathy, empathy, a sense of justice, social responsibility or anything remotely to do with helping someone besides myself. The cupboard is bare, folks. The cupboard is burnt to shit.
“Mr. Quintabe? I’m Ava Bouchard,” she said. “My friend, Billy Sorensen, said he was staying here. I was wondering if I could see him.” He looked at her with barely disguised animosity. This, of course, was the friend who was in so much danger that Billy escaped from the hospital to help her. If Isaiah’s experience was any guide, the danger would be right behind her. She stood there, waiting to be invited in. Let her sweat, he thought. Finally, she asked, “May I come in?” He made her wait another moment before stepping aside. A new course of anger swept through him. Billy and this girl had brought a serial killer to his doorstep. The very essence of everything he was trying to get away from. The bottom of the septic tank, corruption in its most virulent form. His fury rose. He closed the door behind her.
