So Kev Larsen it was, though Bruno took pains to point out that only a narcissistic pussy would tattoo his own name on his own leg. He'd once tried to bust Kev's balls by insisting that Kev had been a gay boy before Tony found him, and Kev was actually the name of his lover.
But Kev never responded appropriately to ball busting. His grin pulled wierdly at the scars on his cheek as he grabbed Bruno's ass and made smooching sounds til Bruno ran for cover.
Teasing about Kev's gayness had ended abruptly there.
Bruno lifted the hospital sheet, stared at Kev's leg. His calf was furred with dark blond hair, sinewy and bulging with hard muscle. The tattoo was very small. The three irregular letters were a crooked, blurry bluish smudge beneath his body hair. It looked like a bruise.
He flung the sheet down. It made him twitchy and rattled. His own vulnerability, staring him down, scaring him shitless. Kev was the pillar in the center that held up the roof of his whole life. More so than Uncle Tony, more so than Aunt Rosa. Kev had saved Bruno's ass. Kev had given payback for what Rudy had done to Mamma. Some, anyway. It could never be enough. But it was a shitload better than nothing.
Kev couldn't die. Life would be unthinkable without him. Bruno didn't usually think in those squishy emotional terms, but seeing how similar Kev looked right now to the way Mamma had looked in her coffin, after Rudy got through with her--it got to him, deep inside, in places he preferred to ignore. And being aware of it made him aware of his other stupid, irrelevant feelings, too. Like, for instance, how jealous he was of this hypothetical fucking family that Kev might or might not find. No, amend that. Would find. If they were out there, Kevlar would find them. The guy was as focused as a freight train.
Kev's real family. Bruno could never be part of that, if it existed. This perfect family would enfold Kev to their bosoms and overwhelm him with their wonderfulness, at which point Kev would forget that the wiseass pain in the ass punk Bruno Ranieri ever existed. There would be a pie-baking mamma, wielding a wooden spoon, a benevolent dad with a pot belly. Brothers and sisters who looked like him, understood him, knew things about him that Bruno would never know.
Take a fucking pill. Families like that didn't exist, except on TV. Families were, by definition, fucked up. But blood was blood.
It was a stupid thing to be worrying about, though, since Kev hadn't even woken up yet. He still looked like a goddamn corpse. In fact, Kev's blood family was the least of Bruno's current worries.
He hadn't felt like such hammered shit since Mamma's death. Every muscle hurt. He had a headache, from grinding his teeth. He hadn't gone into Lost Boys since Kev's episode, yesterday morning. They were managing fine without him, thank God. He'd be useless anyhow. All he would do was snap, growl, and criticize.
Truth was, he was not terribly surprised by the recent series of events. There had always been something precarious about Kev's very existence. A sense of lurking danger. The unknowns, the questions, the bizarre violence wreaked upon him. Bruno had been waiting for the other shoe to drop since he'd met the guy. It had finally dropped, over a three-hundred-foot waterfall. And the sky was coming down along with it.
Even Kev's inexplicable flashes of genius were unnerving. Just when Bruno thought he knew the guy front and back, whammo, he'd discover that Kev had some new freakishly overdeveloped skill, or rocket scientist body of knowledge. Kevlar, International Man Of Mystery, strikes again. Maybe the guy was actually a stranded space alien.
Huh. Actually, that hypothesis would explain a whole lot.
Too bad that trip over the waterfall hadn't knocked some plain old common sense into his head. It was the one thing Kev lacked. So far, Bruno filled the gap, but only because Kev didn't care enough to stop him. Like with money. Kev sincerely didn't give a flying fuck about it. He'd invent some ingenious marketable thing on some sleepless night, play with it for a few hours, toss it in the closet and forget about it.
Kev's gizmos had given Bruno the idea for Lost Boys Flywear. They'd opened seven years ago as a stunt kite outfit, to exploit some of Kev's kite designs, and branched out from there into quirky educational toys. Kev provided the brilliant ideas, artistic designs, manufacturing plans. Bruno took care of the business, the marketing. The scut work. Everybody had his gift. His was for making money.
The venture worked. He'd arranged for Kev's designs to be patented, to significant profit. Lost Boys was going strong. Neither of them was hurting for dough, or had any reason to hurt for it for the rest of their lives, if they were careful. And minimally practical, of course.
But Kev just wasn't. He was as likely, today or tomorrow, to give it all away to a stranger he met on the street.
Bruno figured he should cut the guy some slack. He was brain damaged, after all. Something had to give. But it was like watching somebody set hundred dollar bills on fire. It made Bruno's ass twitch. It came from growing up on the uglier side of Newark. Bruno liked a big, wide safety net. Lots of soft, puffy financial cushions under him.
Kev was happy to dance on a wire over the lion cage.
Like those poker winnings. Tens of thousands of bucks every night, stuffed through the letter slot of whatever charitable organization happened to be on his walking trajectory. Crazy shit. But he loved the guy. Goddamnit. Right now, he wished like hell that he didn't.
"He's barkin' up the wrong tree," Tony said heavily.
The words startled Bruno out of his unhappy reverie. "Huh?" he said, grumpily. "What tree?"
"Looking for this Otterman fucker," Tony clarified.
"Osterman," Bruno corrected.
"Whatever. Looking for some lily-white scientist prick is a waste of time. Brain experiments, my hairy old ass. He was tortured by a professional. It takes practice and a hard stomach to do what they did to him. That says career criminal. That says mafia. Believe me, I know." He glanced sidewise at Bruno. "So should you, kid."
Bruno shrugged that off. He disliked references to the mafia turf wars his mom's boyfriend Rudy had been embroiled in when Bruno was a kid. Bruno's Mamma, too, by association. Thinking about it made him feel like shit, so he tried hard not to. Tony had run away from the life himself, decades before, to the war in Vietnam. He'd never gone back.
"A scientist could hire career criminals to do his dirty work," Bruno argued. "The mafia aren't the only ones who can figure out how to hurt somebody."
Tony waved that away with a big, bolt-knuckled hand. "He should be looking through military records of special forces troops reported missing in action in August of 1992. Or checking out mug shots of mobsters operating in Seattle. I'm tellin' you, he was special ops, under-cover on a domestic mission. He got on the bad side of some big criminal organization, and they decided to take him out. Simple."
Bruno grunted. "Nothing about Kev is simple. I saw what happened when he saw that photograph."
Tony made a hawking sound in his throat. "Fuckin' coincidence."
"Kev was a scientist," Bruno asserted stubbornly. "Ever seen his bathroom books? Biochemistry, aereonautic engineering?"
Tony rolled his eyes. "Come on. Give me a fuckin' break. A fuckin' scientist, trained in eight different styles of martial arts?"
This was a decade-old argument, and totally pointless, but Bruno's innate cussedness made the words pop out. "I know you think any guy who ever went to college is a pussy, but the opposite is just as improbable. It's as likely that a scientist would learn martial arts as it is that a Navy Seal or a Ranger would study theoretical physics for fun."
Tony shook his head. "That kind of fighting ain't for fun," he said darkly. "A guy doesn't train like that unless he has to, to survive. Kev ain't no fuckin' dilettante. He was a career fighter. Remember Rudy?"
Goddamn Tony. Like Bruno's mood needed another crushing blow. The last thing he needed to think about was the day Rudy had gone after Mamma. He'd gone after her a lot. But that day, he hadn't stopped.
That time, she'd died. Head injuries, a ruptured liver, a broken rib that perforated her lung
. Other stuff he couldn't even bear to think about. And Rudy got away with it, on a bureaocratic technicality related to how the evidence was collected. Rudy had connections with the local don. He was protected by corrupt police. He was untouchable.
But Bruno had witnessed him hitting Mamma on countless occasions, and Bruno was set to testify at the trial. So Rudy and two of his mafioso henchmen had flown out to Portland, to simplify things.
They'd concluded that the best time to nab Bruno was early morning, at his uncle's diner, where he went to eat breakfast before school. Nobody on the streets, the uncle asleep in the apartment upstairs. Just the kid, eating his eggs with the fucked up retard who lived out back. The guy who mopped floors and washed dishes for Tony. The one who couldn't talk. How fucking convenient was that.
Bruno remembered every minute of that morning with weird clarity. He'd pounded at the door of the diner at five in the morning, until Kev got up and let him in, like always. He'd perched at the counter, talking a mile a minute while Kev cooked and served breakfast. Three eggs, over medium, with lots of pepper, grilled ham, white bread toast with big, gluey globs of grape jelly.
Then Rudy and the two other guys burst in. They grabbed him off the stool. Rudy wrenched the locket Mom had given him off his neck, the one he wore day and night. He dragged Bruno toward the door.
What happened after was like an action film sequence, viewed from an upside down artistic angle, bent over, arm torqued, screaming bloody murder. A dinner plate hit one guy with lethal precision on the bridge of the nose like the fucking Frisbee of death, and the man smashed into the curved glass of the pastry counter, ass wedged into the cream pies. Blood, glass, rice pudding, coconut custard everywhere.
Then Kev flew out, transformed. Bruno was dumped when the storm hit. He rolled under the table and watched. Big eyed. Slack jawed.
It wasn't a fair fight, even with the knives the other guys held. Those guys couldn't land a blow. Kev ducked, swerved, evaded every assault with casual grace. Sent Rudy spinning back with a kick to his face that sent him reeling over a table, arms flailing. Seized the other guy who was rushing him, flipped him like a doll. Sent him flying headfirst through the front window. Rudy's bellow of challenge blended with the shattering crash, but his headlong rush ended just like the other attacks. A flurry of motion, a flip, a twist, a thud, and Rudy was on the ground on his side, arm broken, his own knife protruding from his ass. The fork Bruno had used for his eggs was stuck in Rudy's groin, standing up grotesquely. Rudy curled in on himself, screaming and pawing at the red spreading on his crotch with his uninjured hand.
Tony heard the window. He came running down in his shorts and undershirt. He looked over the carnage, yanked the weeping Bruno out from under the table, looked him over and gave him a whack upside the head. He gave the wheezing Rudy an unfriendly nudge with his toe. He gave Kev an assessing look.
"Next time, don't fuck the window," was his laconic comment. "Them bastards are expensive. Now help me take out this trash."
Bruno and Kev helped drag the bleeding thugs though the kitchen, to the alley where Tony's pickup was parked. Bruno timidly asked if they should call the cops. Tony gave him a look. "Got a death wish, kid?"
Fair enough, after what had happened back in Newark.
Tony ordered them to hose down the bloodied sidewalk, and hang a CLOSED FOR REPAIRS sign. Then he'd driven his pickup away.
That marked the moment Bruno stopped following Kev around out of curiosity, and started to do it out of hero worship. Tony changed his attitude toward Kev, too. He'd started staring at him, whenever his back was turned. Wondering what he had back there, quietly washing his dishes. And if it was a time bomb that might blow up in his face.
Tony's chair creaked as he shifted in the hospital chair. "You look like dogshit," he said. "Rosa sent lamb shank. And rice pudding. She thinks the smell of food will wake him up. Have some. There's plenty."
The mention of rice pudding made Bruno think of the guy wedged into the broken dessert counter, bleeding out into the cream custard.
He shook his head, and dragged out his laptop. Researching Kev's bad guy was a good distraction, and somebody else had to do it, since it was looking pretty fucking hazardous to Kev's health to do it himself.
"You researching that Otterfen asshole? I told you. You're wasting your time. Put that goddamn thing away and eat something."
"Osterman," Bruno repeated, though it was no use wrangling the point. Tony won, by seniority, loudness, meanness. A swift backhand to the mouth, sometimes, too, when Bruno was younger. He still remembered the sting, but he didn't hold a grudge. He also remembered watching Tony drive off, the black plastic tarp draped over those mobsters who had come to kill him. How grateful he'd been when Tony came back hours later, and grimly hosed down the bed of the pickup. No talk, no explanations. It was like the thing had never even happened.
Tony had just eaten a big dinner in the back of the diner afterward, and then sat there, smoking a long series of hand-rolled cigarettes. He stared, head wreathed in smoke, looking fixedly at the back of Kev's head while the guy washed a huge pile of dishes.
Then he told Bruno to stop crying, or he'd pop him a good one. Tousled his hair, violently enough to give him a case of whiplash. Went off to bed, heavy boots thudding on the stairs.
It was like Kev said. Life was full of tradeoffs. Nothing was for free.
But sometimes, even the highest price was worth paying.
Noise battered at Kev's brain. Voices, babbling, but he couldn't decode the words. He was stuck in a hole inside his mind. His oubliette.
Here, he could not be compelled. He'd blocked the connections to his voluntary motor functions. He didn't know how he'd done it. All he knew was that here, in this place, they could not fuck with him.
The flip side was, he couldn't compel himself, either. He was safe, but paralyzed. And stuck. No door in this place. No tunnel. No ladder.
It wasn't unconsciousness. His mind was crystal sharp. And he wasn't panicking. Not yet. He'd been in here before. He'd climbed out somehow. It might take a while, but he'd figure it out.
He wondered if this was a coma, but he doubted it. Most people weren't called upon do develop evasive mental maneuvers to thwart brain control. Probably comatose people were curled up in a similar oubliette, fast asleep. Not clawing the walls, like something out of a Poe story. Whoops. Wrong turn. If he kept on in this direction, he'd panic.
Just wait. The quiet instruction floated up like a bubble from the depths. Be patient, and just wait.
He set himself to calming down the turbulence in his mind with his usual techniques. A white starflower. The Milky Way, spattered out across the night sky. A monolith of black volcanic granite, stark against a snowscape. Still, his thoughts whizzed and spun. He started to get exhausted. Only then did he bring out his secret weapon.
The little angel.
He tried not to use the angel too often. Overusing his talisman would tarnish it, rob it of its protective power. Even daring to think of her too often could overlay false memories over the true, pure one.
It worked, like always. He looked into those clear, solemn eyes, and the whizbang ricochet of desperation calmed. He felt relief, an upwelling of unreasonable joy. Like cool rain on a fevered face.
His brain slid into focus. The static of noise battering him from outside resolved into comprehensible language. A conversation, ping-ponging back and forth over him. Voices he knew very well.
"...bullshit," a gravely voice pronounced. "They don't teach torture techniques in goddamn scientist ivory towers." That was Tony's voice, that harsh, cigarette and alcohol roughened rasp.
Emotion jabbed through him, prickly and sharp. Unwilling fondness, anger, and gall. That crusty old bastard. The jolt flipped the switch, reconnected him. He could move now. His eyelids fluttered.
"...course it is," Tony was replying, to whoever was out there. "Kid's been a pain in the ass since the day I found him."
"You shou
ld have let the guy kill me," he blurted hoarsely. "But you didn't." His eyes opened, fastened on Tony's face Tony stared down, eyes narrowed in shadowy bags of flesh. "Don't mouth off to me, kid," he said. "A coma ain't no fuckin' excuse."
Kev's mouth twitched. Tony stared, stone faced. No way could he give in so far as to smile back. To yield was to die. His unspoken creed.
Kev looked up at Bruno. The only time Kev ever saw any familial resemblance between Tony's ravaged face and Bruno's GQ good looks was when the kid was scowling, just like that.
"No more comas," Bruno warned, through clenched teeth. "Or I will kick your useless ass right into the next life. That clear?"
It wasn't a coma, but Kev didn't have the energy to explain. He attempted to move his arm, was cautiously pleased when it obeyed his command. He patted Bruno's cheek, stubbled with black scruff.
"Thanks for caring," he said.
Bruno recoiled. "Don't patronize me," he snarled.
Kev gazed at his brother. The beard scruff was stark evidence of how upset he was. Bruno was always shaved, gelled, perfumed, dressed in the best. Today, he wore a wrinkled T-shirt with coffee stains.
He felt a pang of guilt, and struggled into a sitting position, peeling off the tape that held his IV needle into place.
"Hey!" Bruno clamped Kev's hand in his own, stopping him. "What the hell do you think you're doing? The nurse can do that!"
Kev plucked Bruno's fingers off his forearm. "I'm awake," he said. "I can move. Let me get on with it."
"On with what? With looking for the monsters of your past? Great! We get to witness you die from a stroke when you find them!"
"I won't have a stroke," Kev said mildly. "Where are my clothes?"
"Lie back down, kid," Tony advised. "You look like shit."
Kev ripped the tape loose and yanked the needle out of his hand. He looked around the room. "Give me that laptop, would you?"
Fade to Midnight Page 8
