Boone sat on the couch and arranged his tissues. He’d jerk off and crash. Clean up and put away his gear when he woke up.
“Fuck me, baby.” Stephanie Swallows cursed over the low hum of Boone’s air conditioner. “Fuck my tight ass with that big dick baby!”
31.
4:12 A.M.
When Santa Anna woke, his head was already beginning to pound. It took him a few moments to realize where he was. He wasn’t in his cell, with another man snoring above him, on a block with dozens of other men snoring and farting, dreaming and scheming.
He was in his house, on his couch.
Christ. He was thirsty.
Santa Anna wondered how he’d gotten home. The last thing he remembered was drinking at the club, drinking with that kid. That fucking kid. What did Frank see in him?
Santa Anna got up and walked as delicately as he could through the dark to his kitchen. Tanji would be upstairs with the kids, asleep in their bedroom. He got a glass from the cabinet above the counter and let the water on the sink run.
Madison had asked him if it was good to be home. Was it good to be home? It was great to be home. But now that he was home, he had work to do. He’d been away from his wife and children for a long time. All that time, a male presence had been absent from Carter and Deanna’s life. That bothered him. Children needed their daddy in their lives, to show them what was right and what was wrong.
The job this morning, it had felt good. Good to be back doing what he liked doing, what he was good at. It had felt right. That thing with the vamp walking in the daytime, that was bizarre, but it had been a dark, rainy morning and there would be time to think about that.
tap tap
Earning. Santa Anna sipped his water and thought about it. Deanna would be ready to go to college in a few more years. He needed to work as much as he could, get as much as he could while he could. And not get caught again. Never again.
A branch was tapping at a window somewhere in his house.
Santa Anna thought about his life. It had been a series of compromises. His own parents had raised him to walk the straight and narrow and he’d compromised that vision to provide for Tanji and the kids. When he’d been arrested he could have talked and given them Frank and Bowie or the others, but he hadn’t. He’d compromised and kept his mouth shut and in exchange for being away from his woman and his babies they’d been provided for and taken care of. And when he was in prison, he’d compromised. He didn’t like to think about that though.
tap
Santa Anna looked around the kitchen and almost screamed. There was a man standing outside the kitchen’s sliding door to the deck. The man was tapping on the glass of the door with the long, sharp nail of one finger and smiling, a ghastly grin devoid of warmth or merriment. Santa Anna had seen the smile before, and he knew the thing outside his house in the middle of the night was no man.
He thought about the gun in his bedroom. He had silver bullets in it.
The thing outside held up its hand and waved. It looked amused.
Fuck. How had it found him? If it knew where he lived, who else knew?
The thing was beckoning with its index finger, inviting Santa Anna to come closer to the sliding door.
Shit. Santa Anna thought about it. He had no choice. He set the glass on the counter and crossed the kitchen to the sliding door.
“What do you want?” he called out to it.
The thing held a finger up to its lips, enjoining silence. It was deathly pale and gaunt.
Santa Anna unlocked the sliding door and slid it open. The thing outside made no move to step into his house. It couldn’t unless he asked it in.
Santa Anna stepped out onto his deck, into the night. He closed the door behind him.
“Carter.” The thing on his deck was almost as tall as Santa Anna. “It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough.” Santa Anna spoke honestly, thinking of Tanji and his babies. Their bedrooms were on the other side of the house, so he wasn’t worried they’d hear any of the conversation out here. “What are you doing here, Enfermo?”
“Not happy to see me?” the look on the vampire’s face feigned disappointment.
“No, not at all.”
It was smiling again. “Not going to ask me when I got out? Not going to ask me how I found you?”
“Yeah, I’ll ask you how you found me.” Carter’s tone was belligerent but he knew it meant nothing, not in the position he was in.
Enfermo raised his hand and in the moonlight Santa Anna saw a shotgun shell between its thumb and forefinger. Enfermo nodded and tossed the shell into the air. Instinctively, Santa Anna took his eyes off the vampire and snatched it up in his hand before it could begin its descent to the deck.
Santa Anna puzzled over the shell, and then he realized where it had come from. The car. This morning. His prints would be on it. Damn.
“We need to talk.” Enfermo had moved, real quick like vampires could. It was between Santa Anna and his sliding door now. “You and I.”
“About?”
“About a couple of things.” The vampire licked its lips and Santa Anna involuntarily reached up to his neck.
32.
12:15 P.M.
“Eddie, when are you going to settle down, get married and give me some grandkids?”
Bowie’s mother was younger than she looked, heavy set with thick ankles. Life had been rough on her. First a husband, then a son.
“I already got the perfect gal, ma.” Bowie squinted against the sunlight filtering into the kitchen. It was only a quarter past noon and his mother was already busy in the kitchen, preparing their lunch, planning their dinners. The woman could cook.
His head throbbed. Too much drinking last night. The air condition kept the kitchen nice and cool.
“Look at you, out to all hours of the night.” The way his mother said it, she wasn’t really angry, just busting his chops.
“I was out with Carter last night, ma. You remember him?”
It took Bowie’s mother some time to get over to the kitchen table where he sat with his cup of coffee.
“Black fella?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s he been?”
Bowie sipped the coffee. “He’s good. He’s been away for awhile. Now he’s back.”
“It’s always good to be back.”
Bowie loved that about his mother. She wouldn’t ask what he’d meant when he’d said Carter had been away for awhile. He wondered what she thought. Did she believe Carter had been living as an expatriate in Europe or somewhere? She also wouldn’t delve too deeply into her son’s whereabouts, his own comings and goings.
Bowie was thirty eight years old and yeah, he still lived with his mother, but she gave him his space.
“You got any aspirin, ma?”
“One minute.”
Something was sizzling in a frying pan on the stove. Bowie thought it smelled like chicken. She’d have breaded the cutlets and would fry them, set them aside for later. Lunch was going to be a good one today. Damn if this hangover wasn’t chasing his appetite away though.
“What are we doing for Labor Day, Ma?”
“Your uncle is having a barbecue.”
Bowie’s Uncle Paul lived out on the Island with his wife and kids. Uncle Paul was his mother’s older brother. Paul was a school teacher, had been for thirty years. Guy deserved a Labor Day barbecue.
Bowie’s mother thought her son worked some kind of security. She spun mysteries about her son’s employment for the neighbor ladies, for her friend Sarafina. Sometimes Bowie’s mom alluded to her son working for a wealthy and famous architect. She would say “I can’t tell you who” but his name rhymed with “bump.”
Bowie let her have her fantasies. The truth wouldn’t have been any less far-fetched.
“Here you go, Eddie.” She handed him his aspirin and a glass of water.
“Thanks, ma.” Bowie’s mother waited on him hand and foot. She was slowing down a
s she got older. She blamed her knees. Bowie knew her weight wasn’t helping any.
Bowie noticed Leroi lazing on the window for the first time. The cat was swishing its tail back and forth, its eyes closed. His mom had two cats. Leroi and Warrior. They’d been alley cats but they didn’t go outside now.
He tossed back the aspirin with a gulp of coffee, ignoring the glass of water.
Those cats had the life. They had the run of the five room apartment. The only place they couldn’t go was Bowie’s bedroom. He kept it locked. Not even his mother went in there. It wasn’t something they needed to talk about.
Bowie and his brother, Billy, had grown up in this apartment. Their father had been out of the picture early on. One of those guys who went out to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes and never came back. Way Bowie saw it, man couldn’t be a man, couldn’t raise a family, good fucking riddance. Coward.
Bowie was nine when his old man had split. His mother made excuses for the guy, said the man was tired of being sick and sick of being tired. Whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.
Their apartment was more than big enough for the two of them and the cats. Billy had moved back in five years ago before he’d died. Leukemia. Bowie was saving money so he could buy his mom a house in the suburbs. He was reluctant to buy now. The housing bubble would have to pop sooner or later.
He rubbed his forehead and thought about Carter’s house on Long Island last night. It’d been dark so he hadn’t gotten a good look, but what he’d seen had looked nice.
“Macy’s has a big sale this weekend.” His mother started talking about all the stuff on sale at Macy’s. Bowie’s mom thought Macy’s was the shit. He bought her gifts from Saks and F.A.O. Schwartz, Monolo Blahnix, fancy little over-priced boutiques in the Village. When he told her how much the Jimmy Choos he’d bought her were, she’d looked at him like he was crazy. Bowie knew none of that stuff compared to Macy’s for his mom. He could buy her a Faberge egg, and if it hadn’t come from Macy’s jewelry and watches department it wouldn’t have impressed her.
Bowie sipped his coffee, listened to his mother talk, and hoped one of her friends was available to go shopping with her. Bowie always paid for Sarafina, wherever her and his mother went. He’d sent them to Hawaii a few years back, right after Billy died. His mother had liked that. Gave her and Sarafina something to brag about at church for a few months afterwards. He’d send her again but she couldn’t get around any more. It was bad enough he was probably going to have to go and see Johnny Mathas. Again.
“Want to go see a movie this weekend, ma? Mel Gibson’s got a new one out.”
“I know, I saw that in the paper. Eddie, you’re a young, handsome man. You should go to the movies with a pretty lady, not your mother.”
“My mother is a pretty lady.” Bowie knew it’d bring a smile to her face and it did. His mother never liked any of the women he brought home. Truth was, neither had he really.
“How bout you, Ma? When are you going to let Augie the butcher take you out to eat?”
“Pshoosh! Your father was the only man for me.”
“Come on, Ma. You think dad would want you to be all alone?”
“He wouldn’t and I’m not. I’ve got my boy.” It was the way they talked about Bowie’s dad. Like he had died and not walked out on them. Bowie figured it was a coping mechanism, something that had allowed his mother to raise her two boys alone in Queens all those years.
Bowie knew if he ever got married she was moving in. It went unsaid. He also knew he didn’t plan on ever getting married.
“What about Dr. DeStefano?”
“Dr. DeStefano,” his mother reminded him, “died fifteen years ago.”
“You could have been a rich woman, ma.”
“I have everything I need.” And she did. Bowie provided well for his mother. She had every conceivable gadget someone like her could want or need. A five-quart tilt mixer. The finest China Macy’s sold. She had shit she didn’t know how to use, shit she couldn’t pronounce. The rent was paid on time every month. Bowie paid a woman to come in and clean twice a week.
“Eddie, could we talk about something?” His mother was all serious now.
“Sure, ma.” He finished his coffee. “What’s up?”
“Those boys are out on the corner again.”
Bowie knew which ones she meant. The hood rats.
“They say something to you, ma?”
She ignored his question. “I was thinking maybe you could talk to Thomas again? Those boys, well, they frighten Sarafina and some of the other ladies in the neighborhood.”
“Got it, ma.”
Bowie’s mom wanted him to get in touch with his childhood friend, guy who’d gone on to be a cop. Bowie’s friend drove a patrol car in Staten Island. Bowie knew his mom didn’t understand this. But he knew what he had to do.
“Eddie? It’s got nothing to do with they’re being black, you understand?”
“I got it, ma.”
“Thanks, Eddie. What would I do without my boy?”
“You’d probably drink beer and play cards with Sarafina.”
Bowie’s mom laughed as her son excused himself and left the kitchen. He dialed the combination to the lock on his door and entered his room, closing the door behind himself.
He changed to jeans and a black t-shirt with a Marilyn Manson’s Smells Like Children print. He left the shirt untucked. Bowie considered the twenty five pairs of sneakers in his walk-in closet and decided on his blue on white Nike Air Penny 3s. He’d have to clean the BKs he’d worn last night.
Bowie unlocked the fireproof strong box that took up most of the back wall of the closet. He looked over his guns and money. He always kept fifty thousand cash in the safe. Most of his money was overseas. He took one of the two Glocks he owned, inserted a magazine, jacked the slide. Bowie stuffed the pistol in his jeans at the small of his back, under the t-shirt. He closed and locked the safe.
He collected his money clip, loose change, pager and keys from the bureau and put it all in his pockets. After locking his bedroom door he walked back into the kitchen.
His mother was dicing onions for a gravy over by the stove.
“What’s on Oprah today, ma?”
She told him but he wasn’t listening, he was watching Leroi’s tail swish back and forth and hoping the thugs would be outside on the street, that it wasn’t too early in the day for them. He kissed his mother on the forehead and promised he’d be back in a few minutes.
His downstairs neighbor, Lou, was outside on the sidewalk, sitting in his lawn chair much like everyday. Lou had been out on disability from the sanitation department for as long as Bowie could remember. Lou put on his neck brace before he went outside every day so no spies from the DSNY would see him and report him. Cut off his checks.
“Eddie.”
“Lou.”
Bowie’s silver Audi was parked at the curb.
He walked down the street and saw the boys. They were already out and in place. Two of them. Where was the third? It was a hot day. Shouldn’t these guys be in school or something? Bowie wondered when school began. Summer vacation had to be ending sometime this week or next. How old were these guys? Were they still in school?
As he walked he whistled to himself, and the tune he whistled was Morricone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Where was the third? There were usually three. Today there were two. Bowie decided he’d hit the drug store first, then talk to the boys. He crossed the street before he got to where they were so he could avoid them for the time being. They paid him no mind, he was just another big white dude on the other side of the street.
He purposefully didn’t look over at them as he passed by. He knew the kids. They lived a few blocks away in the projects, but for some reason hung out on his block. They’d always looked like they were up to no good to him, but they’d never exchanged anything other than hard looks.
He rounded the corner and rapped on the glass of the
deli, waving to Mike and Fat Tony behind the counter.
In the drug store he waited on line behind an old lady at the pharmacy counter. The Les Miserables soundtrack was playing on the stereo system. Val Jean and Javert were confronting each other over Fantine’s dead body. Val Jean was asking for a few days to find Fantine’s daughter and set her up. Javert continually resorted to the law and how he had to uphold it. Steve, the pharmacist, loved the show. Bowie had taken his mom to see it. Twice.
Bowie stared at the condom display.
“Eddie.”
“Steve.”
Steve had his mother’s prescriptions ready and bagged and rang them up. Bowie knew Steve didn’t particularly like him. Steve wasn’t one of those guys who believed his mother’s cockamamie stories, that her son was a security guard or secret agent. Steve, Bowie knew, recognized that Bowie had some kind of an edge.
But the pharmacist was good to his mother, had been all these years.
Bowie paid cash, thanked the druggist and walked up front where one of the two ladies behind the counter asked him “How’s your mother, Eddie?”
“She’s good. Thanks for asking.”
He bought two newspapers and ten dollars worth of instant lottery tickets for his mother.
When he left the store the lady who was arranging the cigarette cartons said “He’s a good boy” and the other one agreed.
Bowie waved to Mike and fat Tony behind the counter of the deli and rounded the corner and as he did he resumed whistling the Morricone tune.
He walked past Arlene’s house and hoped he wouldn’t see her and was relieved when he didn’t. He’d fucked her once, had to have been ten years ago, and she never let him forget it. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon. She was probably at work.
He spotted the boys on the corner and there were three of them now.
Time to man up, he told himself.
As he walked, Bowie thought of things that irritated him. His mom getting on him about getting married and starting a family, that wasn’t an irritation so much as a nuisance. He’d never say it to his mother but he was tempted to ask her how her marriage had worked out for her.
I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) Page 13
