It means I have a chance here.
Not like I’m the first person to ever sit here and think that, though.
Prod 1 sits Mary down at the table with us. Prod 2 still behind me. He won’t even have to aim. At least some of me’ll mist onto Singer.
It’s the only real consolation I’ve got right now.
Over by the front door, the Chinese guy exhales or something, slumps over sideways. Has been dead his whole life already, was just waiting for that fast little slug to make it official.
“Never getting that stain out,” Prod 2 says, about the Chinese guy.
“Don’t think it’s the coffee he’s worried about,” Prod 1 says back.
“They have to be here?” I say to Singer.
He doesn’t answer.
“Mary Nacero,” he says, nodding across the table to Dashboard Mary then over to me, “William Colton Hughes. The very first.”
This is funny to him.
Anybody else, and they’d already be dead. Maybe even him, if there wasn’t a shooter behind me.
“We’ve met,” Dashboard Mary says, trying to see me through the gas mask, I think. Trying to see me but pretending like it doesn’t matter.
Singer’s whole frame shakes. With a laugh, I think. But a sob can look the same way.
There’s the gun at the back of my scalp again. Singer shakes his head no.
The instant the gun scrapes away from my scalp—with stubble, you can feel which direction it’s going—I whip around, already moving to the side, and then have the gun palmed, am guiding it past me.
I pull Prod 1 right to my face, my gas mask hose dangling between us, one thumb at the hollow of his wrist, the other dug up under his arm, near the pit.
And the gun, the whispery little gun, it’s directed right at Singer.
“Do it,” I say to Prod 2, his hot shot already out, about to dig into my side.
The current’ll hit me but it’ll hit Prod 1 too. Enough for his trigger finger to jerk.
Prod 2 gets it, raises his hands, takes a step back.
I nod, not sure what to do next, just that it’s going to be bloody and loud and all at once, but Prod 2 isn’t done yet.
In one smooth movement, he has Mary under one arm, a push dagger up under her throat.
At first I think he’s already done it, made her into his own personal meat puppet, but then it’s just a short, wide blade. Not into the neck yet.
“Save me the effort,” I say to him.
“She’s a gift,” Singer says, suddenly right in my ear, the barrel of the pistol surely in his stomach. “We found her in the stairway.” He laughs about this. To himself. Leans back. “You look all over the city for somebody, and then there they are, right in your own house.”
I’m staring at her now, Mary.
“All over the city,” I say, trying not to let it be a question.
But Singer’s not stupid.
He settles back into his chair, says it: “Can we continue now, Billy?”
I breathe in, breathe out.
It feels good, because it’s from Belinda, the breathing. Something I took from him.
I push Prod 1 away hard enough that his lower back catches on the countertop.
Before he’s even got his balance he’s firing.
The first shot whips by the left side of my head, leaves a tunnel of sound there, and the other does what he meant: clips the cheekbone flare of the mask. Pulls my head that way, bloodying my nose.
I pull the mask the rest of the way off and slam it on the table. Daring him.
Singer shakes his head no, though.
“I have need of your . . . your particular proclivities,” he says to me, tilting his head over at Mary.
I turn to her and—it’s beautiful—she narrows her eyes a bit, like we’re at a high school reunion or something, one that happens in the cereal aisle on a Wednesday morning, then her mouth moves over some word she can’t quite make anymore. The second time she tries to say it, she can’t help herself anymore either. She’s screaming. Not your usual kind either, that wells up slow, builds itself into something louder, but the down-deep way you scream if you’re a kid and your mom’s locked you in the closet, told you maybe she’s going to burn the house down now, or maybe it’s just a candle in the kitchen this time. All depends if you told the truth or not.
And she doesn’t stop either, Mary, has reserves most women’ll never get to know, and then’s pulling from even deeper than that.
Singer smiles.
Without having to be told, Prod 2, magician that he is, pulls a clear plastic produce bag from his sleeve, wraps it cleanly over her face and pulls on it with both hands.
“Guess you were right,” he says across Mary, to Singer.
“Shut up,” Singer hisses, or whispers, or says with his hand, I don’t know.
They’re all far away from me.
Mary. She’s all I’m watching.
Every scream, her eyes are locked on me.
It’s kind of perfect.
“Okay,” Singer says then, and, instead of finishing it, Prod 2 slams her face forward, into the table. She comes up vacant, blood and snot in the plastic folds.
One of my robot arms is already under the table, its hand sly and familiar at my crotch.
Sometimes you just can’t help it.
When I sneak a guilty look over to Singer, though, the look on his face keeps me with him.
“I really hope you’re about to tell me the truth,” he says, and my hand stops, my head cocks, and that’s all I have time for.
Prod 1 steps forward, clocks me behind the ear with the butt of his pistol.
When I can see again, it’s through plastic. The same bag they used on Mary. Her snot and blood a distinct taste on my lips. My nose bleeding again.
“This is for your own good,” Singer’s saying.
We’re in the living room. Mary’s slumped beside me, still not with it.
“And, just so you know,” Singer says, one of the Prods buzzing a hot shot into my chest.
My body arches away from the couch so I’m standing on my heels and the back of my head.
And then it’s over.
Singer raises a green and white box up before me, tilts it from side to side.
Thin mints.
Behind him, all around us, the apartment’s turned upside down. He’s been looking for something. They’ve been looking for something.
That he’s asking now, though, it means they didn’t find it.
What?
“Girl Scout,” I say, and Prod 2—I can see him now—starts to hit me again with the hot shot but Singer stops him.
“Girl Scout,” he leads off, his eyes wet now.
“Girl Scouts sell those,” I say. “Good, good.”
He turns, stands, his hands pulling his hair.
He flings the thin mints box across the room. The cookies scatter. Probably make the air over there taste sweet for a few breaths.
Then he lowers himself before me, is sitting on the heels of his loafers now, his hands at his chin like he’s praying here.
“I need you to tell me something, Billy,” he says. “Just one thing. One, real thing.”
I look to Prod 2, still too close.
“What?” I say.
“Did any girls ever try to sell you any cookies?”
More than anything, what he wants me to say here is no.
I’m not stupid.
I shake my head like this question is an insult, look to Prod 2 again.
He doesn’t hit me.
“You know I don’t eat that shit,” I add.
Singer nods, keeps nodding. Already knew that.
“But you wrote it,” he says. Like he’s arguing my case now. To himself.
“The package they came in,” I say. “That’s what I wanted. Special delivery. YG, y’know? That a problem now, what?”
Singer squeezes his eyes shut. Hates to hear this but knows it’s true too. That it fits.
>
Then he shakes his head, even more lost.
“She didn’t come here,” he says to himself then. In thanks, I think.
“I apologize for, for all this,” he says, sweeping his hand around, and just when I’m starting to nod with him, Prod 1 takes both sides of my face bag, pulls it tight.
Singer turns, watches me fight it, then is on my lap all at once, his knee in my gut, his hands keeping mine from clawing through the plastic.
“Did Alissa ever come here?” he screams right into my mouth, his voice all shrieky and wrong, and I go slack.
Not Megan, but Alissa.
And then I understand.
How Dashboard Mary was setting me up.
Prod 2 hits me with his hot shot again but it’s nothing, is happening to somebody else already.
I haven’t breathed now in I don’t know how long. Flashbulbs fizzing in my head, slower and quieter, quieter and slower, farther and farther apart, a universe dying.
But I understand. Could have loved her, I think, Dashboard Mary. Maybe even do.
What she did, how she paid Singer back for taking her husband, for taking her daughter, for feeding them to me, was to lure his own daughter down that same hall.
Except.
Except then she lost the nerve to go through with it.
That was what happened, what shook her.
She looked down my hallway and saw a girl about ten about to step in, and flashed on Riley doing the same thing.
And she was a mother, after all. She is a mother.
She couldn’t let it happen, so came down, saved the little girl from the bad man. Her voice not even shaking.
But then. But now. Now she had this girl, this evil crime boss man’s daughter, right?
Stop sleeping at home. Keep moving. Cell phone only.
There wouldn’t be anywhere to run, though.
So.
So then you hide in the last place he’d ever look for you. The stairway of the building you hate most in the world. The Chessire Arms. So close to the devil that he can’t see you.
But he does.
And seeing you here, it confirms his worst suspicions. And you don’t tell him anything different, won’t say anything. So what he does then, he just takes you by the back of your arm, marches you upstairs. And the reason you go, the reason you go, it’s because already in that upstairs apartment, because you gave it to him, there’s that Girl Scout uniform. That evidence. And you’ll get to see that look on his face. That I’ll get ventilated first is obvious. Spread all over the fucking wall.
After that, however it goes down is all right.
He’ll have paid with his daughter, worth more to him than anything, and I’ll have paid with my life.
For Jack, for Riley.
We’ll have paid and it’ll be over.
The only problem is that the whole thing, it’s hinging on that Girl Scout uniform I’m not supposed to have. Not supposed to even know about.
I try not to smile, but can’t help it.
Singer pulls himself off me, lets me rip the plastic down from my face.
When I can say it, I do: “She—she took your kid, right?”
He nods, once.
“That’s why—why nobody’s been to my door for so long now,” I say, balling the plastic up. “You’ve been worried, distra—”
“You don’t know what I’ve been,” he says.
I shrug, toss the plastic at Prod 2’s face. It hits him in the shoulder.
“She hasn’t been here,” I say, wiping my face with my arm but the wet-dry vac sleeve hurts my nose. I shake my arm, sling it off. The other too. “Nobody has, boss man. Been kind of lonely, actually. Ask him.”
Kid Hoodie, untouched on the counter.
Singer sneers at him.
“Then what’d she do with her?” he says, quieter. Not a boss now but a father, a daddy.
I just stare at him, like waiting for him to finish the question. Give me something to work with here.
He turns, seems to study the wall on the other side of the dining room table. Like he has no idea about the halfdoors in the closets, between apartments.
Just as well.
My life kind of depends on that.
I arch my back, trying to get it to pop.
There’s two scorch marks on my stomach.
Later, I tell myself, rubbing my finger over their heat.
“Her name is Mary Nacero,” he says, reciting. “Her husband, her husband, he . . . . ”
“—was a police officer,” I fill in.
“Detective,” Singer corrects, finding his words at last but watching me too now. “That’s what she does, mixes in truth with lies.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s right, she wouldn’t have told you. She’s in grad school. Psychology.”
I run my hand over the flare of her hip, pat her flank, give my attention back to Singer.
He shrugs. “What else do you need to know? She’s not been very accepting of the hand life’s dealt her.”
“I did certain things with her daughter,” I say.
“Don’t—I don’t want to know.”
“You sent her to me.”
“Shut up already!”
“Just saying. So she was smart?”
Singer nods, still not looking at me.
“While her husband was—while he was having discussions with my . . . with—”
“Belinda Two,” I say. “The new yoga instructor.”
He turns, evaluates me.
Not like I’ve gone too far, I don’t think. But something.
It’s not good.
“While her husband the detective was trying to turn her against me, I had some of her graduate work made available to me. One particular assignment held a certain...fascination, you could say. Behavioral Sciences. Design the perfect killer.”
I smile too big. “She draw a picture of me?”
Singer doesn’t acknowledge this.
“Her perfect killer was one that’s been broken down, been made to face some big social taboo, so he just goes blank. Then you just come in through headphones, like it’s their own voice talking to them, and tell them who they were before. Who they are now. Use the taboo to bridge the two, so it’s the ‘culmination and the continuation’ is how she put it, I think.”
“So she’s saying everybody’s a killer, right? They just need to let it out?”
Singer shrugs. “She got a D, had to redo it. So then, yes. She drew a picture of you, Billy.”
I narrow my eyes, don’t quite follow.
Singer opens his arms to take in the whole apartment. All of the Chessire Arms.
“She took a different angle in the rewrite. You find a real true mad-dog killer, then hand-deliver all his victims.”
It’s why she was screaming like that. She was in her own paper, now.
I nod, say, “It could work, yeah?”
Singer smiles with me, clamps his right hand onto my shoulder, and we study her together.
“Wake her,” I say to Prod 2.
He looks to Singer for confirmation. “You heard him,” Singer says without looking up.
Prod 2 hot shots her.
The couch goes dark with urine.
“It’s gonna get worse,” I say.
“My daughter’s out there somewhere,” Singer says back.
I nod, open my hand for Prod 2 to give me his blade.
He doesn’t like it, but does, handle-first.
I snap it around easy, make like I’m going to push it back into him.
He flinches, the hot shot clattering against the coffee table.
I’m the only one smiling about it.
“Better get started then,” I say, and kneel down over Dashboard Mary like I always knew I would. First I cut her jacket off, throw it behind me. Then, the way her shirt’s hugging her.
I cut an up-and-down slit over each breast, then the bra too, so just her nipples stand through.
P
rod 1 has to look away.
“Boss,” Prod 2 says.
Singer shakes his head no, doesn’t look away for an instant.
“Usually you have to work up to this,” I say, “get her in the mood, but if you’re on a schedule...”
“Boss,” Prod 2 says again.
“This is where it all comes together for her,” I say, running the flat of the blade around the nipple, waking it up, “both kinds of love, her husband, her daughter, it’s all right here for her, right here.”
Mary comes to, starts thrashing around, but I’ve got her arms pinned, my ass on her thighs. She’s not going anywhere.
I make sure she sees my smile, too. Who’s doing this to her. And liking it.
“You don’t—he—he—” she starts, blubbering like they all do. Still calling me Jack, even. This isn’t the phone anymore, though. This is real fucking life, baby.
I snap my hand behind me.
“Rob,” Singer says to Prod 2, and then has to say it again.
Prod 2 gives me the plastic bag. I stuff it into her mouth, kiss her lips at the end, suck a little of the plastic my way.
Face to face, she goes calm.
Animals will do that too, past a certain point.
I push the bag in further, until she has to gag it back up a little.
I want her here, not safe in her head.
And she’s looking just dead into me, eyes all pooled up like she’s sorry for me or something. It’s her own narrow ass she should be concerned about here though.
Or. Not her ass, exactly.
“Take a picture,” I tell her when she won’t stop staring into me, then lean close, right to her ear, where Singer and Prod 2 can’t hear. “Just shake your head no, no matter what,” I tell her, and she goes stiff, my lips to the side of her face. It’s almost like a kiss, but one she’s taking from me.
I sit up, stare hard down into her to see if she understands.
She does. Thinks she does anyway. Can already see the two of us escaping this bad scene hand-in-hand like runaway newlyweds, her leading me through the streets because I can’t stop squinting.
“Well then?” I say to her, for Singer, and she shakes her head back and forth no, tries to tongue the plastic out, is still saying something, has to say it: “ack, ack.”
Jack.
“What?” Singer says, coming in close.
“She thinks he’s going to come save her,” I tell him, then more to her: “They all think that.”
The Least of My Scars Page 16
