27.
2:55 A.M.
“Hey there little man, who are you?”
Gossitch was still standing in the doorway talking to Tanji. A little boy had stuck his head around her leg.
“I’m Carter Jr.”
“Carter Jr., huh?” Gossitch smiled, tired but happy. “And how old are you little man?”
The kid held up nine fingers.
“Carter,” his mother demanded. “Why are you up so late?”
“I heard voices downstairs, momma, so I come to check.”
“Lookin’ out for his mother. You’re a good kid, Carter Jr.”
“Thanks.”
28.
2:56 A.M.
“Let me ask you this,” Bowie rubbed his head in the car. “You don’t seem to give a shit about anyone or anything or what anyone thinks, but you care about what Gossitch thinks, right?”
“The old mans been good to me.”
“So maybe you can be good to the old man, you know?”
“You implying I’m not?”
“I’m saying—” continued Bowie “—the nature of what we do, it’s gonna be hairy. But we don’t need to do anything to make it hairier, right? I mean, that shit today with the vampire, burning him like that—”
“That wasn’t about him.”
“Yeah, it was about that day walking fuck, wasn’t it? But listen, what if that day walker decided he wanted to get back at you through me or the old man, like you did to him?”
“You I wouldn’t care so much about,” Boone noted sardonically.
“Be that as it may,” Bowie pressed the issue, “what if?”
“Let me tell you what I’d do,” Boone spelled it out. “I’d fuck him up. I’d come after him and his whole clan. I’d destroy his children and his children’s children, and then I’d go and dig his old mother up and fuck her bones.”
Bowie shook his head.
“Like I said, Boone, you got potential. Thing I’m wondering, what side of the divide you gonna come down on?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The line between humans and…and animals, man.”
“Humans are animals, Bowie.” Boone looked out the window into the night. “Guys like you like to kid yourselves otherwise. Guy like me never forgot the fact.”
“So there’s a deeper philosophical core underneath that hard bullshit exterior, huh Boone?”
“Call it what it is. It’s too late for this bullshit anyway.”
“Here comes the old man, let’s make nice. Or just pretend.”
“Don’t worry, Bowie,” mentioned Boone. “You’re not on my bad side. Yet.”
“Believe me,” promised Bowie. “I’m not. Worried that is.”
29.
3:10 A.M.
Tanji had taken Carter Jr. back upstairs to his bedroom and tucked him in. She checked on Deanna sound asleep in her own room. Back in the living room she covered her husband with a light blanket and went and sat at the kitchen table with the checkbook and some bills.
She sorted through the bills and arranged them by amount due and date due.
She couldn’t believe Carter was back. She’d messed around with other boys in high school, but once she met Carter, he’d always been the only man for her. No man was perfect and she knew hers wasn’t either, but he always tried and he was true to her and their children.
When he’d been arrested…Tanji knew Carter had been tempted. If he had just cut a deal, given up Frank or maybe not even Frank, maybe just one or two of the other men who they were working with, he could have avoided prison. He could have avoided being away from her and Carter Jr. and Deanna.
Tanji wrote a check for the mortgage. She should have had that one out in the mail earlier, but so long as it was in by the 15th of the next month they were okay.
When Carter went away, money had been a concern, a major concern. At least until Frank stepped up, delivering thousands of dollars to her each month, more than enough to cover the bills and whatever else she and the children might need. Tanji knew Frank was rewarding Carter’s loyalty by providing for her and the kids.
Because Carter hadn’t talked. He’d kept quiet and he hadn’t said a word when the prosecutors were threatening him with twenty to thirty years. He’d kept quiet when the judge slapped him with a ten to twelve year sentence. He’d kept quiet after everything he had seen and done to survive inside prison. He’d been away when Carter Junior was born and Tanji knew that had hurt him bad.
She stuffed a check and the statement in an envelope for the electric company, made sure the address was visible in the cellophane window, sealed the envelope.
Tanji wondered what Carter had been through in prison. He hadn’t talked about it when she’d gone to see him and he didn’t talk about it now. He’d returned to them older and leaner, but being back with his family had revived her man. And now he was back on the job and money would be coming in, big money. They were talking about visiting the Magic Kingdom in the fall. Disney had just opened the Animal Kingdom this past spring. The kids would like that.
She subtracted the amount of their phone bill from the balance in the checkbook ledger.
Tanji knew her man must have seen bad things in prison all those years. He’d been home a few weeks already and he hadn’t touched her. He’d touched her, hugged her, kissed her, held her, but they hadn’t been intimate. Carter definitely wouldn’t have let any man harass him in prison, but she wondered if he had ever been with another man in all that time. The thought disgusted her but she had heard about what went on in prisons and, god, ten years was such a long time. She knew.
There were nights she woke up and Carter wasn’t in the bed next to her. He was downstairs somewhere, doing she didn’t know what. This seemed to be most nights. She assumed he wasn’t sleeping, because he wouldn’t get out of bed until ten or eleven the next morning.
Maybe what they needed was a night out together, alone without the kids. Carter had been spending as much time with their son and daughter as he could since he’d returned. Every day they were out and doing things, going places. Except yesterday when he’d put in work with Frank.
She heard her man snoring on the couch and smiled.
Tanji looked up from the checkbook and out the sliding glass doors that let onto their deck. She stood, pushed her chair in to the table and walked over to the doors, looking out onto the deck and backyard. She looked over the grill, the patio table and chairs and umbrella and the trees that ringed their property. Everything was as it should have been.
Still, she’d felt like something had been watching her.
Tanji yawned and decided it was time to put the checkbook away and head back up to bed. She’d be up in a few hours with the kids. Carter Jr. wanted to make pancakes for his father and she had told him she’d help.
The thing standing in the trees watched her turn from the sliding doors and walk off into the house, the light in the kitchen turning off.
30.
3:47 A.M.
Boone flipped on the light in the alcove of the small apartment he called home in Queens. The apartment was quiet and everything looked undisturbed. The room was slightly cool. He’d left the air conditioner on from the night before and it continued to hum. He opened the door to the hall he had just closed and sprinkled a handful of the marijuana seeds Blind Mellon had given him on the floor outside the door.
He didn’t think vampires or anything else in this city that might have a reason to want to find him knew where he lived, but he believed one could never be too careful. Most of the vampires showing up at his door would have to stop and count the seeds before trying to barge in. Even then, he’d been told they couldn’t get in unless he invited them, and fuck if he’d ever do that.
He locked the door and set the dead bolt.
He stepped past his small bathroom and kitchen into a larger room that served as his living area. Boone sat down at the small table where he took his meals and unlaced his b
oots. As he did so he thought about the woman in the bathroom stall at the club. He wanted to fuck her, even if she was some kind of nun. He thought about the tall vampire that he’d confronted this morning. He just wanted to fuck up that dude.
Hamilton and Madison had gone home with the nuns, Boone couldn’t believe it. Get out of here.
Boone pulled off his socks and walked over to his entertainment center, pressing the power on his CD-stereo. The radio came on, set to one of the urban stations.
“Yo, New York, this is your girl Neecy here on WKEA, and I’m sittin’ here with that young up-and-comin’ superstar who’s new joint, Way Back, is really lightin’ stuff up. I’m talkin’ bout Busta Nutz. Busta, what’s crackin’ daddy?”
“Chillin’, chillin’.”
Boone laid the Smith & Wesson on the table but didn’t bother to unload it. There were things in this city that wouldn’t stop to count seeds at his door, things that the dead bolt would only slow but not stop. Most of those things, from Boone’s experience, wouldn’t get past the .529 if he could manage to hit them. There was a Remington 1100 shotgun mounted on the wall above the alcove leading off to the kitchen and bath and the entrance. Point and shoot, the spreading buckshot would do the rest.
“For real, Busta, let’s get this right out in the open. Clear this thing up for real, right here, right now, aight?”
“Aight.”
“I’m talkin’ bout your name, Daddy. Busta Nutz. What’s up with that?”
Though Boone’s apartment was only three small rooms and a bath, he had multiple guns stashed somewhere in each. In the room where he slept he had a locked gun case with a small arsenal secured inside.
“Yo, I’m sayin’, it’s like this, ya her? Nutz. Cause I’m nuts. I’m a crazy mother—beep—ya n’meen?”
“Yeah.”
“A crazy mother—beep”
“Yo, yo, daddy, you gotta watch yourself with the F-bomb, okay?”
Boone sprawled out on his futon couch, tired, deciding whether he wanted to go to sleep or not.
“Crazy, I mean, people don’t even—niggas can’t wrap they heads ‘round it. Look here, what I’m sayin’, when I was a little nigga up in the group home, the staff used ta say t’ me, they say, nigga, ya’ crazy. Youse nuts. Get it?”
“For real, jus’ like that?”
“I mean, they never like called me nigga or nothing like that, but they’d axe me, boy, what’s wrong wit’ jew?”
Boone rummaged around in his cut off shorts and found the vial with the cocaine. He laid the vial on the carpet, considering it from where he lay. He had enough to keep himself up all night.
“Uh-huh, and Busta?”
“And Busta ‘cause, well, you keep poppin’ off at da mouth, and I’m a bust you up, ya n’meen?”
Boone dumped the bag of CDs he’d bought at Blind’s on his stomach. He looked through them. Big L. Diddy. N.O.R.E. His solo album. Capone was in prison.
“Which brings me to this beef you got goin’ on between you and Gangster Khan.”
“Psssh, that—beep—why’d you hafta go and bring that nigga’s name up now, yo?”
There was a bump in the other room. Boone wasn’t alarmed. It was just Stash. The guy—Boone thought if you could sex a ghost then Stash was most definitely male—had a way of literally going bump in the night.
He reached over and pressed the message button on his answering machine.
“You have one new message—”
“Nah, fo’ real, Busta, Khan goes after you pretty hard on his new album, The Golden Hoard.”
“Tuesday, five fifteen P.M.”
“Yo-yo-yo, Neecy girl, let me tell you somethin’, aight?”
“Hi, Boone. It’s Jennifer.”
His sister.
“Just calling to remind you about tomorrow afternoon. The Metro North stops by us at 1:50. Leaves Grand Central an hour before that. Derrick is going to pick you up at the train station. The kids can’t wait to see you, okay?”
“Let me tell you a lil’ somethin’.”
“Bye, Boone.”
Click.
“I ain’t got no beef wit’ a nigga less tha’ nigga wanna getta beef wit’ me, and that Gangsta Khan nigga, he got like a mother—beep—’in Big Mac load ‘a beef, ya n’meen?”
Boone reached down for his bag of ye-yo but it was gone. He looked across the room and it was resting on the top shelf of the entertainment center.
“Stash!” he called out. The apparition had a way of doing that sometimes, of moving things around. Thing was, Stash always seemed to move the things Boone really wanted somewhere where Boone would have to get up off his ass and go and get them.
Shit. Boone yawned again. He didn’t want the coke that bad. He needed to get some sleep. Blind had said it’d been cut once, but they must have cut it with ephedrine or something because it was speedy, and he wasn’t going to catch any sleep with that shit.
“I’m a bust that nigga’ yo. You hear me Khan? I ain’t no L.L. and you ain’t—you ain’t Canibus, aight?”
“Whoa-whoa-whoa, hold up Nutz, what you sayin’ here on K-E-A? You gonna bust him how?”
“I’m a bust him every which way conceivable to a nigga. I’m a bust him on the microphone, leave him starin’ and sh—beep—with his mouth open, like wha? Like he just said whut? He just said whut?”
Boone decided he’d take his vitamins, whack off, and go to sleep.
He swung his legs off the futon, sat up, stood and walked across to his entertainment center, opening it and retrieving the paper bag he kept his gear stowed in.
“And him and his crew, dey want ta bring it on the street? Oh, Neecy, we’s fo’ real then son, then we’s talkin’—”
Boone shut the stereo. He liked hip hop just fine but could do without the ghetto bullshit.
He placed the paper bag on the table and looked out the window to the dark street below. Boone closed the blinds on the window and returned to the entertainment center. He turned on his television and VCR. He opened a cabinet and browsed through his tapes, chose one, popped it in the VCR.
Returning to his chair at the table, the TV screen went from blue to Stephanie Swallows in a thong bikini on a lounge chair on some sunny deck somewhere. Boone had thought about it before and thought it was California.
The woman was touching herself and talking about her pussy.
Boone opened his bag and took out what he needed. He tore open the packaging of a syringe and tossed it on the floor.
He found the bottle of deca durabolin he was currently drawing from and eyed it. About half empty. He had more.
Boone had always been strong and big and bad tempered. The gear only made him bigger and stronger and more ill tempered.
He plunged the needle into the rubber stopper and righted the vial. Boone pulled down on the plunger and watched the thick, syrupy liquid slide down the walls of the syringe. Three hundred milligrams every other day kept his joints correct.
Stephanie Swallows had rolled over onto her stomach with her ass in the air and was showing off her butt plug while she talked about how she really wished she had some cocks to put in her mouth. Boone knew there’d be two guys showing up to oblige her in about thirty seconds.
Stash was gone. Looking at the CDs on the couch Boone saw the ghost had absconded with his Big L CD. What the fuck a spirit wanted with a CD, Boone didn’t know. He was glad Stash had sense enough to disappear whenever he was going to rub one out.
When the syringe was filled, Boone tapped it, watching the bubbles rise through the liquid. He pulled the syringe from the stopper and capped the vial. He considered where he’d inject.
Last time had been his ass cheek. Time before that his left thigh. He was tired and just wanted to get some sleep. He had too much in the syringe to put it in a biceps or calf. He’d be all stiff and unable to move the muscle for a couple of days if he did that.
“Oh yeah,” Swallows said on screen as the lower halves of two performers walke
d on screen. Each man wore a towel. The way she said it, Boone thought she sounded retarded or twelve years old.
He pulled off his shirts and tapped his shoulder. It’d do. Mark would tell him he needed to take a shower first, or at least clean the area with an alcohol wipe. Mark would have wanted him to change the needle on the syringe because drawing the test would have dulled the point somewhat.
Boone plunged the syringe into his shoulder. He pulled back on the plunger, saw a miniscule mist of blood enter the chamber, then started depressing the plunger. He’d never got an abscess and figured if he had it would have healed over fast anyway. Boone rarely, if ever, caught so much as a cold. He knew there was something up with his body, something different than everybody else. That thing had attacked him that time, he should have been dead. He wasn’t.
He’d gone and got a tattoo once when he was seventeen. Dropped four hundred dollars on it. The next morning his t-shirt was dirty where the ink had run but the tat had disappeared from his arm. Just like that. What the fuck, right?
It was funny, thought Boone, that that woman on his screen bobbing between two dicks was nothing but a lower torso in some Manhattan loft now. Funny, but not hah-hah funny. Funny ironic, like he had been crouching down there studying her remains and here she was, alive and active on screen.
When the plunger stopped against the casing Boone pulled the needle out of his shoulder and inspected the injection site. There was a single drop of blood and that was it. He capped the needle and left it on the table.
Standing, he found the box of tissues he kept on the table and went back to the futon couch, unbuttoning his shorts. The cammies pooled around his ankles.
Swallows was on her hands and knees between the two men, one in her mouth, the other in her ass. Boone had seen this video dozens of times. She’d switch positions in a minute or so, sitting her ass down on one of the guys, and she’d get verbally aggressive with the both of them, telling them to bang her ass harder.
I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) Page 12
