“The Finlans,” Ronnie spat. “How those two pieces of trash were ever deemed fit to adopt, beats the hell out of me. They already had a halfwit eight-year-old kid, and I guess they wanted a ‘normal’ kid too. But they soon tired of me too. They used to lock up the retard and me for days at a time in the room we shared. We had to shit and piss on the floor. When they let us out they beat us up. God knows why. For something to do? I had bruises all over my body and the retard’s teeth were decaying and falling out of his mouth. Falling out! After two years of this hell someone at my school called the cops. They didn’t see my bruises or anything—I kept them well hidden—but they caught me eating food out of trash bins and licking other kids’ plates clean at lunchtime. The cops charged the Finlans with child abuse and I got sent back into the system. I was adopted twice more before I turned sixteen. I’m not even going to get into that shit. So, no, Mom, you didn’t give me to a good family. You stole my childhood and you fucked up my life. Which is why I figured I’d return the favor.”
“I had no idea, Ronnie,” she said. “I didn’t know. If I knew—”
“Too late, Jade. Too fucking late. You know how many nights I thought of you and Dad? Sitting in my bed at night, thinking you guys would show up at one of the shitholes I was in, praying that you would show up and say it was all a mistake, that you were taking me home? But you never came, did you? You were having too much fun living the good life in LA in your big house and partying with all your rich friends.”
“That’s not true!” she said. “We just moved to—”
“Shut up, Jade. Just shut up. I’m done talking. Therapy’s over. Stick your head in the noose—”
The doorbell rang.
Chapter 21
Ronnie glared at Jade. “Don’t say a word—”
“Help!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Help! Help me!”
Ronnie swung an open hand at her face. She got her arms up in time to deflect the blow.
Turning, she fled from the room. She made it as far as the staircase.
“Hel—”
And then she was flying through the air.
Ronnie had pushed her!
Jade’s right shoulder smashed a stair with bone-crunching force. She heard something snap. Her chin struck a riser. Her teeth cut through her tongue.
Then her feet were above her, then under her, then above her again as she somersaulted down one step after another.
Chapter 22
Guy Pezzullo knew all about domestic violence. During his career as a police officer, he’d been dispatched to as many as a half dozen disputes in his precinct each day, and he’d seen everything. Bludgeonings, stabbings, shootings, chokings, slappings. But domestic abuse wasn’t only physical. It was also emotional, psychological, financial, sexual, you name it. A healthy chunk of the population, he’d come to learn in his thirty years of dealing with scum, were miscreants, men and women alike. You never knew what some people were capable of behind closed doors, not even nice white-collar couples who seemed to have it all together.
So Guy wasn’t all too surprised when he heard his polite, soft-spoken neighbor screaming for help from inside her house.
If he were still on the force, he would have followed procedure and called out “Police officer!” to identify himself. But as he was now two months retired, he simply tossed his umbrella aside, tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, and burst inside.
Jade was crumped at the foot of the staircase like a bird who’d had its wings clipped. Tears wet her face, smearing her eye makeup. Blood dripped from her nose and mouth.
A man stood at the top of the stairs, half hidden in the shadows. He appeared too young to be Jade’s husband—but then again, this was LA, and you never knew. He held a bloodied bat in his right hand.
Guy didn’t think the blood on it belonged to Jade. There was too much of it on the bat, and not enough of it on her face.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded.
“What’s going on here?”
“You’re interrupting a family moment.”
“Where’s Mick?”
“Not home. So why don’t you take a hike?”
So he’s not the husband, Guy thought. His first assumption was that this was some love triangle gone haywire, only this didn’t make complete sense, as it was usually the scorned husband or wife that lost the plot, not the new lover.
He eyed the man on the stairs. He was tall, fit, strong. Guy had kept in decent shape over the years, but he was sixty-three and unarmed.
The odds were not in his favor.
The man seemed to reach this conclusion too, because he quickly descended the stairs.
Guy knew there was no time to retreat, so he charged, wanting to close the distance between them as much as possible before the man could swing the bat.
Nevertheless, the asshole still got off a decent swing, striking Guy on the shoulder and staggering him sideways. Guy threw a wild punch, missed. The man swung the bat again, taking out his knees. Cursing, Guy dropped to the floor. The man raised the bat above his head with both hands.
“Now just wait a sec—”
Guy Pezzullo never finished the sentence.
Chapter 23
The Tempests had moved into their newly renovated, five-bedroom house on Fountain Avenue, Courtesy of Chrysalis Records, yesterday afternoon. Tommy found it hard to believe they had only been there for less than twenty-four hours because the pad was already totaled. The two toilets lay in pieces in the backyard, the TV was smashed, the carpets were stained, the kitchen cupboards were broken, and the sink was filled with shit (not so inexplicable given they no longer had a working toilet).
Lying on his bed in his bedroom, the door closed and locked, Tommy tried to tune out the noise reverberating through the house so he could catch some much-needed Zs. He’d been living on vampire standard time for far too long.
Something heavy slammed the other side of the wall a few feet from his head.
Someone yelled.
Glass shattered.
Laughter.
More yelling.
Tommy scowled. What was going on out there?
Living like animals in the storage shed had been one thing. The band had even taken a certain amount of pride in their squalor. That was their life then. It was who they were. It was real. So they embraced it.
But things were different lately, he thought. They had been signed by a major record label, and everybody was telling them they were The Next Big Thing. They had a lot of money and responsibilities coming their way. They were no longer destitute street gypsies, and trashing the house wasn’t mayhem as usual; it was mayhem for the sake of creating mayhem. And, really, what was the point in that? It was getting to be immature and a bit depressing. It was time for them to move on and grow up.
Another loud bang against this wall.
“Bloody hell,” Tommy said, jumping off the bed and snagging his leather jacket from the back of a chair. He left the bedroom—deciding he was going to have to get a chain and padlock for the door—and started down the hallway, careful not to step in a puddle of what appeared to be urine.
In the living room The New York Dolls blasted from the RCA stereo system—one of the few items in the house nobody dared to break. Roughly twenty roadies—many of whom had migrated with the band from the storage shed—filled the room, lounging on the furniture or passed out on the floor. Cigarettes smoke hung in the air like a blue veil, rancid, competing with the organic smell of pot. Johnny the bassist was sitting on a beanbag chair in the corner with two young girls, mainlining Persian heroin.
Tommy would have loved a taste more than anything, but he was done with all that shit; he wouldn’t let himself become an addict again.
Stepping over inert bodies and overflowing ashtrays and empty pizza boxes, some with impromptu lyrics scribbled on the grease-stained cardboard, he made his way toward the front door. Someone he didn’t recognize asked him where he was going; he told hi
m to fuck off. A girl, clearly tripping out, her pupils as large as dimes, stepped in front of him, blocking his way. She grabbed his belt and tried to loosen the buckle and wouldn’t let go until he shoved her aside.
Outside, the night sky was raging, a blitzkrieg of thunder and lighting and rain. Two plain-clothed West Hollywood deputies sat in an unmarked car parked alongside the curb. Tommy wrapped his knuckles on one water-streaked window as he passed by. They glared back. He’d seen the same two guys regularly keeping an eye on the storage shed, where on any given night there might have been fifty or sixty ne’er-do-wells hanging around the alley out front of it, breaking bottles, blaring music, or firing off the occasional gunshot—in general, infuriating neighbors and slaughtering property values in the vicinity.
Tommy walked west on Fountain Avenue, splashing through puddles, sticking his tongue out to catch raindrops, having a grand old time. He turned north on Crescent Heights until he reached an apartment building at the corner with Sunset. He took the stairs to the second floor and knocked on the door at the end of the external hallway.
Their manager, Michelle, didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs, so her place always felt like an oasis when he wanted to escape from everything going on with the band. Tommy usually only crashed on her sofa for a night or so, but on a few occasions he’d stayed for as long as a week. This never went over well with Michelle’s roommate, Silvia. But whatever. She had a boyfriend. She could stay with him if she thought Tommy was an inconvenience.
Tommy felt bad for Michelle. She had been booking the band’s gigs since before anybody heard of them. She’d promoted them tirelessly. She was a large part of their success. And she was about to get royally screwed over. Bob Corker had promised her that she could stay on as the band’s manager, but that had been bullshit. Bob and Mick and the other top executives were already looking for someone more experienced to replace her. She was going to be cut out of the picture without any kind of recognition for her work, financial or otherwise. It wasn’t right. But what could he do? Business was business. Maybe he would write a song about her. Problem was, he’d never written a “nice” song in his life.
Tommy knocked again, louder, but he already knew neither Michelle or Silvia were home. He went to window, tried to shove it open. It didn’t budge. Michelle always left it unlocked for him, which meant Silvia, the bitch, had locked it.
Pisser!
If he hadn’t blown through the three hundred dollars Mick had loaned him on strippers at Seventh Veil, he could have bunkered down in a sleazy motel room tonight. Now he had nowhere to go—
Mick, he thought.
He lived not too far away in Laurel Canyon, on Lookout Mountain Avenue, a few houses away from Frank Zappa’s place. Mick had mentioned this the day he’d been selling himself and Chrysalis Records to the band, as if the fact he lived near Frank Zappa made any fucking difference to them.
Anyway, Tommy was sure he could find Mick’s pad. He didn’t know the street number, but you couldn’t miss the flashy yellow Corvette.
♀
The two-mile hike up into the hills took Tommy longer than he had planned, and by the time he spotted Mick’s Corvette at the top of a sloping driveway the thunderstorm had lost its novelty, and he was miserable, shivering, and exhausted.
Tommy walked up a flagstone path to the front porch. He frowned when he noticed the door was cracked open a few inches, the wood around the lock strike plate busted.
From inside he could hear The Doors “The End” playing. He pushed the door open farther. It swung inward on silent hinges. He stepped into a dark foyer and his frown deepened. A large and oldish man lay on the marble floor, blood all over his face.
Tommy nudged the guy with the toe of his wet boot. “Oy there?” he said. “You alive, matey?”
The man didn’t move or reply.
Tommy knelt next to him and felt his neck for a pulse. He found one, weak but regular.
He stood up again. The first floor was seemingly deserted. However, he could see a faint glow coming from the second-floor hallway.
What the bloody hell was Mick up to?
Did Tommy want to know?
Not really, but the thought that Mick’s sweetheart wife might be in some sort of jeopardy prevented him from turning a blind eye.
He ascended the staircase slowly. The steps were hardwood but didn’t creak. At the top he turned left, noting the candles lining the hallway. They were all half-melted, sitting in higgledy-piggledy piles of hardened wax.
From the room ahead and on the right came a brighter glow of yellow light, and he could hear sounds too, soft, arrhythmic thumping.
More curious than afraid, Tommy padded silently to the open doorway. Candles formed a large circle in the middle of the floor, almost like something out of a satanic ritual. He didn’t give them a second glance, because the action was to the right, where Jade, dressed in what appeared to be wedding dress, hung from a cord from the closet door. Her head was cocked to one side, her mouth gaping open. Her fingers clawed at the noose around her neck while her legs kicked back and forth, her feet erratically striking the door behind her.
Some bloke—Mick?—sat on the floor in front of her, watching her die.
Picking up a baseball bat propped against the wall just inside the room, Tommy said, “What the bloody hell is going on here?”
♂
Whirling around, the man seated on the floor—not Mick—blurted something and leapt to his feet. Tommy rushed him, swinging the bat, catching the side of his jaw, sending him sprawling to his side.
Tommy went immediately to Jade, wrapping his arms around her bottom, hiking her higher so the cord from which she depended went slack. She yanked the noose from around her neck and gulped back air into her oxygen-deprived lungs with hoarse, rusty sounds.
“That’s good, soonshyine,” Tommy said. “Keep breathing. You’re going to be okay—”
The crazy fuck bowled into him from behind, smashing him face-first into the wall. Tommy started to turn when excruciating pain dug into his neck. The lunatic was biting him! Tommy dropped the bat—it was useless in close-quarters fighting—and elbowed the guy in the gut. He grunted like you might when your mouth was full—and full his was, with Tommy’s flesh.
Tommy elbowed Hannibal again and again. Instead of releasing his bite, the bastard shook his head like a rabid dog. Blood gushed everywhere.
Crying out in pain, Tommy reached his hand over his shoulder and grabbed the guy’s ear, yanking it as hard as he could.
Hannibal’s teeth came free. He wailed.
Tommy finally had the leeway to spin around. Before he could do much else, however, the psycho head-butted him in the face, pulverizing his nose.
Tommy’s legs went weak but he remained on his feet.
He returned the head-butt.
“Argh!” the guy said, stumbling away, cupping his own busted nose in his hands.
Then, from nowhere, Jade appeared, white as a snowflake in her wedding dress. Gripping a whiskey bottle by its neck, she swung it hysterically at the man.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Tommy snatched the baseball bat off the floor and slammed it as hard as he could into the man’s midsection, breaking at least a couple of ribs by the sound of it. The bloke moaned, doubled over, dropped to his knees.
Tossing the bat aside, Tommy tugged the switchblade necklace from around his neck and flicked it open. He kicked the bloke in the chest, knocking him onto his back.
“Mom…” the guy wheezed, looking at Jade.
Flabbergasted, Tommy looked at Jade too. He had never seen such a wretched, hate-filled expression as the one that had hijacked her face.
“You’re not my son,” she rasped.
“Just to be sure, love,” Tommy said, “he is the bad guy, right?”
She nodded silently, and that was enough for him.
He drove the glinting blade through the sicko’s right eye.
Epilogue
Jade stood a
t the living room window of the house she was renting in Queens, New York, watching the swirl of snowflakes outside drift lazily to the ground. Her hands were wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee, from which she sipped slowly. It was Sunday morning. Tomorrow would be her first day volunteering at Astoria Library. She had been looking forward to the start ever since she had a brief chat to the head librarian two weeks before. It might not be the most exciting work in the world, admittedly, but it would be work nonetheless, and it would help her fill the long, cold days of winter, and distract her from thinking too much about Mick, and Ronnie, and everything that happened on that nightmarish evening in Los Angeles seven months ago.
Ronnie survived Tommy’s knife attack—the switchblade penetrated three inches into the side of his right eye socket but stopped short of piercing his brain—and after Ronnie was released from the hospital, he was charged with the attempted murders of Guy and Jade, as well as the murder of Mick. He was found guilty on all three accounts and sentenced to life in San Quentin State Prison without the possibility of parole. Jade had sat in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom on the day the verdict was read, needing to hear it with her own ears. Then she sold the Laurel Canyon house, got her affairs in order, and moved back to the east coast to be close to her sister and her two nephews.
A gust of wind rattled the windowpane and blew the snow on the front lawn into a white miasma. Despite the robust fire in the brick fireplace, Jade shivered, which was followed by a sudden pang of homesickness for California, for everything she had taken for granted there: the towering royal palm trees, the cone-shaped Hollywood hills, the warm zephyrs blowing in from the ocean, and, as rare as they might have been, the days and nights she’d spent with Mick. God, did she miss those, and him. Seven months and it still hurt each and every morning she opened her eyes and realized he was gone and would not be coming back.
The Mailman Page 9
