by Thomas Pluck
Jay stepped closer until he could see the sweat glistening on Bello’s trigger finger.
“You know who killed your boy,” Jay said, and unbuttoned his shirt. The Witch’s cigarette burns gleamed white. Bello stared. “See my scars? Just like Joey’s fingers. Why don’t you tell everybody how you put cigarettes out on him.”
“You get warts from abusing yourself. I made him strong! You boys tattled on him like sissies, for trying to toughen you up.”
“Joseph, point the gun at me,” Billy said. “I couldn’t take how Joey hurt my brother, like you said. Point the gun at me.”
“You’re a cop,” Bello sneered. “You all fucking lie. Ask your father.”
“Joseph,” Leo said, frowning at Bobby’s inert body with resignation. “Put the gun down and act like a man.”
Bello lowered the pistol to aim at Leo. “What would you know about being a man, you cocksucker? You shot an unarmed kid.” He turned and shouted to the room. “You hear that, everybody? The big hero gunned down that black boy in cold blood. Then he raised a little faggot who pranced around on the track team, like that could make the town proud. You both make me sick.”
“You shut your mouth,” Brendan snarled, jaw quivering. He stepped closer, in front of his father. “You want to know what Joey and Nicky used to do? They’d hold little kids down and put their cocks in their faces. Tell them to kiss it! And they did a whole lot worse to me.”
Nicky Paladino gathered sideward glances from the crowd, and his grin faded.
“In your sick dreams.” Bello jabbed the gun at Brendan’s chest. “Why should I believe you? You’re a pervert like your father.”
“You know why Joey hated me?” Brendan shouted, pushing Kevin’s hand off his shoulder. “Because I caught him and Nicky jerking each other off. They wanted me to join in. And when I didn’t, they took it out on me every chance they got. Because they hated what they were!”
“No!” Bello snarled and drew on Brendan.
Jay sprang for it. The pistol exploded against his gut.
The room shrank like the bottom of a well. Cold, dark, full of distorted echoes. Faces flickered and gunshots slapped the air around as Billy and Leo both returned fire. Bello’s shirt blossomed red and he fell. Leo stood over the body and emptied his revolver, sharp face expressionless.
Jay hit the pool like dead weight.
The water felt cool and good and the silence felt like heaven.
Black smoke rose from the hole in his belly. Jay curled around the wound. Diamonds on the water, sparkling in the sky. Breath pounded its fist at the back of his throat, a flock of blackbirds yearning to fly free. He fought to hold his breath, but air bubbles joined with the smoke.
A burst of blue hit the water. The blue-eyed girl reached for him, her dress a flower around her. The boy raised his hand and waved goodbye.
Chapter 42
Joey Bello plowed out the doors of Nutley High into the parking lot and headed toward Kingsland park. Tony Baloney wouldn’t lie. He was a pussy. The kind of guy his father called half a fag.
The only thing worse than a fag was to be half a fag.
“The world needs cocksuckers,” the elder Bello explained, puffing his cigar. “Someone’s got to show the broads how to do it, cut their hair, talk to them and make them feel important. But a man’s got to be a man.”
Joey nodded, rubbing the dusty cauliflower of a wart on his knuckle. His father grabbed his hand. “You keep jerking off, you’re gonna have warts all over. Go get some pussy. I had it by the time I was your age. Find a girl with tits on her, that means they’re ready.”
He puffed the ember red and brought Joey’s hand close. Joey knew not to flinch.
Ever since Joey and Nicky found used rubbers along the curb behind the grammar school, they had wanted to enter that secret world. Fucking went on everywhere. All it took was a cock and a cunt.
They explored porno mags together. Smelled Nicky’s sister’s panties from the hamper and got dizzy from the scent. Climbed out on the roof to watch through her window as she gulped Chris Antonacci’s cock. He had seen them and put on a big grin, pushed her head down.
Nicky turned white. Then started jerking off to it.
Joey joined in. The act sealed something between them.
They watched the girls’ soccer team from behind the bleachers in the fields and traded hand techniques to a troop of bouncing breasts. He was letting Nicky show him a new move when Brendan Zelazko burst through the weeds on the jogging trail.
And stared a moment too long. “I won’t tell,” Brendan said. He sprinted away. They chased him, but he was too fast.
Joey woke in a sweat for a week, wondering what his father would do to him. It didn’t matter that while Nicky jerked him off, Joey had been imagining perky little tits. His father would kill him.
Or worse.
One day at recess, Nicky was telling Algieri that if a pussy calls you a pussy, it don’t mean anything, because they’re a fucking pussy. And he knew what to do.
“Hey, Brenda,” Joey cackled. “You sure had a good time watching me and Nicky take a piss. What are you, some kind of queer?” Then he charged.
Joey got hard when he beat on the little faggot. The way Brendan gasped at a punch to the ribs. How his runner’s legs tensed as Joey held him down, face in the dirt. He came in his pants, grunting with every punch. That’s how he knew Brendan was a faggot.
He tiptoed toward the gazebo, where Tony Baloney has told him that Brendan was giving out blowjobs. He had sweet cocksucking lips and eyelashes like a girl. It would be like a girl doing it. Practice for the real thing. It didn’t make you a faggot. The one sucking the cock was the faggot.
He eyed Brendan’s double-diamond calves knelt in the bushes. The familiar rush tingled down his sides.
And the axe came down.
PART FIVE
HIGHWAY TO HELL
Chapter 43
The boy ran through the fields with the Witch and the Gator man close on his tail. Their sulfur breath thick in the air, claws swiping at his neck. Jay leaned into his run and took flight. He circled and laughed as the monsters shrank into fierce little Atari spiders below.
He followed the Mississippi until he found Andre’s fishing camp, where the scent of fish spawning rose from the bayou and the breeze whipped beards of Spanish moss in the trees.
Jay landed on the porch and Bebe the blue leopard hound tackled him into the kitchen, where Andre and Angeline laughed and pulled him in tight for a hug. His head swam with the spice of Papa’s bay rum and the warm popcorn smell of Mama’s hair.
Jay woke to the smell of disinfectants. He felt glued to the bed. He craned to observe his wasted body. A handcuff tugged at his right wrist and clinked against the bed rail. He was in the ICU.
A large nurse with tied-up braids brought him water. “Hello, there. How’s the pain?”
A dull ache, deep inside. Fuzzy around the edges. He scratched at the patch of scars on his left shoulder, where the Heimdall Brotherhood’s rune had once been. After Okie was gone, Jay confronted the Vikings in the wood shop. Put his shoulder to the sander and ground their tattoo off. He passed out and made two cons puke, but they set him free.
“Feels like someone scooped me out with a melon baller. I dunno, three?”
“Even with the Demerol, you should feel more than that.” She pulled back the sheets to show him the tube drain on his right side, like a second navel. “I’ll say six, so they don’t cut your meds. It’s harder to get it back. And I’ll tell the police you’re still asleep. They question you now, you’ll tell them everything.” She winked and hurried away.
“Thank you,” Jay said, and drifted into a drugged sleep.
When he cracked his eyes again, the room was dark and quiet. The nurse had left warm broth and juice and yesterday’s paper. He sipped his lukewarm meal and scanned for news of the reunion shooting, to count the living and the dead.
Jay dropped the paper in his lap.
Eddie.
The headline read Strip Club Slaughter.
Jay wiped his hands down his face.
Edwin Holtz of Belleville had shot twenty-three people, fourteen of whom died, before checking out with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The article said he parked a Ford F350 full of landscaping equipment in front of the club’s double doors and set it ablaze. By the time the gas tank went, he had set up with a hunting rifle, pump shotgun, and three magnum revolvers in the parking lot and hunted people as they fled the flames. Bodies piled in the doorways and smoke filled the building.
Firemen arrived first. Eddie shot three of them. Police cordoned the block and traded fire from behind the ladder truck until SWAT arrived. Once the odds tilted, Eddie walked into the club and checked out with a pair of .357 Magnums jammed in his eyes.
Jay imagined Cheetah smashing out the office windows. Lowering Raina to the roof of Mack’s Cadillac and escaping into the night.
As he read the list of the dead, his hopes turned to blistered skin and bodies convulsing in clouds of smoke. Jay crumpled the newspaper to his chest, wrenched in silent misery.
He woke to a police detective clearing his throat. Balding hair trimmed close, and a flat poker face that revealed little. He asked if Jay knew anything about the Escalade that exploded in the impound lot.
“That guy who robbed Tony’s shop drove a truck like that. He was mobbed up, the paper said. Don’t their cars explode all the time?”
The officer stared into the grey nailheads of Jay’s eyes. “You’re guilty as hell,” he said. “This will be a different department, now. I’d just as soon wash my hands of you.”
“Your mayor tried to murder me. Why don’t you question him?”
The man’s lip twitched. “He’s dead,” he said.
“Good,” Jay said. “He needed killing.”
The next day they rolled his bed into a private room. Nurses checked his temperature every few hours and fed him chicken soup and ice cream. A sandy-haired doctor said he lost half his liver and fourteen inches of intestine, but if no infection took hold, he’d go home in a week or so. He told Jay he shouldn’t drink alcohol or eat spicy foods for six months.
“That’ll be easy, y’all don’t season anything here.” Jay waved his hand at the television and the curtains. “Don’t know how I’m gonna pay for all this.”
The doctor said it was taken care of and that he should be concerned with resting and nothing else. Tony came to visit, walking with a limp. He showed Jay the scar where they’d put in the pacemaker. “Now I got a heart like the Terminator.”
“I lost some parts, myself. Chunk of liver and a foot of intestine.”
Tony chuckled. “Bring it to Rutt’s, have ’em stuff it and make a ripper.”
“Aw, don’t talk food, Tone. All I get is salty piss water.” He nudged the empty broth bowl.
“I can get Ma to make some pasta fagioli. I’ll say it’s for me, so she doesn’t poison you.”
Jay buzzed the nurse for the urine bottle. “Police coming again,” she said, after she helped him set up down there. They’d removed the catheter that morning and his pecker still burned.
Leo Zelazko walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He wore his uniform and carried a brown leather briefcase. He set the case on the table and opened the brass snaps without a word.
“Good morning to you too, shitbird.”
Jay reached for the remote to call back the nurse.
Leo pressed a single finger into Jay’s bandages. Sweat broke on Jay’s neck as he hunched with pain. Leo tugged the remote on its cord and tucked it behind the bed’s headrest.
Jay collapsed into the bed panting.
Leo held a handcuff key before his red-rimmed eyes. “Will you be a problem?”
“I’m in no shape to misbehave.”
Leo unlocked the cuff and let it dangle from the bedrail.
Jay rubbed his wrist. “Thanks, been wanting a shower. I smell like baked asshole.”
“Shut up.” Leo took a sheaf of papers from the briefcase and dropped them on Jay’s chest. “This includes a your birth certificate. Your stepmother gave it to Mrs. Strick during your trial.”
Jay bent to read it. Leo adjusted the bed for him.
Certificate of Live Birth, Joshua Lee Calvin. Born July 7th 1971, to Joyce Anne Calvin and Matthew Henry Strick.
“So what?”
Leo lifted something black and heavy from the case. “This is an Ingram MAC-Ten. Still one of the best submachine guns ever made. Twelve hundred rounds a minute.” He inserted a short stick magazine, tugged the charging handle to chamber a round, and set the gun on top of the briefcase.
“You gonna plant that on me or ventilate me with it?”
“I’m giving it to you. My sons survived. Brendan was grazed in the leg.” Leo gestured with the machine pistol. “Otherwise I’d splatter you all over the wall. I bought it from your stepfather. It’s unregistered, untraceable. Figure you can use it to complete your business with Matthew.”
“That’s sure tempting, but why are we buddies all of a sudden?”
Leo laughed. “Because I’m done. They found your bullet from my gun in Strick’s skull, and Matthew’s destroying me. The council made me resign. They blame me for the mayor’s death, and they are correct. I let you torment him until I was forced to put him out of the world’s collective misery.”
“If you’d done it sooner, none of this would’ve happened.”
“I’m not like you, Joshua. I’m no cold-blooded killer.”
“You only shoot unarmed boys.”
Leo tutted. “Carnahan’s wife said he had a gun. I see one now, when I look back. Memory is a whore.”
“What about Herschel?
“Who?”
“The cab driver,” Jay said. “At the truck stop.”
“When you caught me in flagrante delicto?”
Jay grinned. “That trucker was licking something, and it wasn’t your damn toe.”
Leo smirked.
“Herschel got shot with a thirty-eight like yours. Day after you got it back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leo said. He sighed and shook his head. “Your silly photo games are the least of my problems. The evidence Joseph had on the carjacker case was released upon his death. Unlike you and Tony, he wasn’t bluffing.”
“Damn shame.”
“I’m being sued by the family. With lawyers hired by Matthew Strick. Led by the prick who got you released. The FBI wants to investigate it as a civil rights violation. Second guessing me thirty years later. Captain Rasp threw down the piece, not me. But I’m the only one left alive, so the vultures get to pick me clean for keeping my mouth shut.”
“Feels bad, don’t it?”
“I’m doing what you should have done. Taking my money and heading south.” Leo lifted the MAC-10. “If you come looking, I’ll feed you to the sharks.”
“We’ll see what happens when your day comes.”
Leo shook with a laugh. “You never quit. That’s why I’m giving you new targets. Those leads we spoke about are in the envelope. And this.” He dropped a pitted jack knife on top of the papers. “It was still in evidence from when we booked you. I thought you’d like to have it.”
Jay turned the Case redbone trapper over in his hand. The one he’d cut his and Tony’s palms with. He tried to pry the blade open with a thumbnail, but it needed oil.
“This concludes our business.” Leo set the gun in the briefcase. “I do hope you put this to good use. Matthew is one vicious little prick.”
A knock on the door.
“Come in,” Jay called. He turned to Leo. “I get scrambled eggs today.”
Vito slipped in the door wearing a black tracksuit, holding a box of Russell Stover can
dies. He clicked the door shut. “Good morning, kid. A little something sweet for your recovery.”
He flipped the box open, revealing a small automatic with a black tube suppressor.
Leo reached for the MAC-10 and Vito shot him in the face. The report sounded like a metal baseball bat clipping a pop fly. Leo dropped the machine pistol and fell with a choked scream.
“Sorry to do this. Boss’s orders,” Vito said. He racked the slide and a brass .22 rimfire shell tinked on the floor. He trained the gun on Jay and raised the volume on the television, wrapping his hand in the sleeve of his tracksuit.
Jay squirmed backward on the bed. He hurled the piss bottle and it bounced off Vito’s shoulder. He reached for the phone while Vito swore.
He shot Jay through his hand. The receiver clattered to the floor.
Jay snarled and clawed for the IV pole, any weapon.
Vito racked the slide and leveled the barrel at Jay’s temple. “Dante said to make it slow, but I kinda like you.” The old lion curled his lip. “Even though you splashed me with warm piss.”
The room thundered and the sheet hanging over the edge of the bed burst apart. Hot gases burned Jay’s cheek as Vito’s bullet punched through the pillow.
Vito tumbled into the wall, stitched from his left knee to right shoulder. He slid down, good leg kicking to fight his descent, slipping on the MAC-10’s scattered shell casings.
Leo crawled from under the bed. The hole in his forehead pulsed a steady stream of blood. He fell to his side and shakily raised the chunky weapon.
Vito winced and bit the slide of his automatic between gray teeth in an attempt to rack the slide.
Leo aimed steady and blew Vito’s head apart with a short, controlled burst.
After his ears stopped ringing, Jay heard the fire alarms. In the halls, screams and shouts. His birth certificate slipped to the floor and caught in the blood.
