BABY WITH THE BEAST

by Naomi West

  She watches me for a long time. I’m reminded of when we stared at each other in my office, when she was tied to the chair. I was the first to look away then, too. “You can’t do this, Spike,” she says. “You can’t use me as a hostage now, after everything. Do you really think that after everything we’ve been through you’re going to be able to sell me, swap me—what? What is your plan? Are you going to torture me in front of him?” She’s on her feet, walking around the table, looking so damn good I could die. “Your plan has a fatal flaw, anyway. My father doesn’t want me. My father doesn’t care about me. I’ve told you this. You need to get it into your head that Snake doesn’t care if I die. You’ve been at war with the Scorpions ever since I went missing. Have you heard anything about me? A whisper, a hint?”

  She folds her arms, staring at me and waiting.

  “No,” I’m forced to admit. “But I can’t believe that a man, even a man like Snake, doesn’t care about his daughter even a little bit. Do you wanna know where I was this afternoon? I was at the apartment of a kid called Danny. An officer, just turned twenty. You know him. He guards you sometimes when you go outside. He was killed like a dog, Yazmin, killed like a worthless piece of meat and left to bleed out on the carpet. Snake is a monster, a monster. I need some goddamn leverage over him.”

  “Dad is a monster, I know!” she cries. I can tell she’s shook by Danny’s death. So am I. He’s going to haunt me for years, I reckon. “I agree! So why the hell would you want to put me in his way? I thought you cared about me. That’s what you said the other night. You need to consider this.” She’s on her knees beside me, her hands wrapped around mine, imploring me to be with her, to care about her, to love her. Maybe I could. Maybe I do. Maybe I will. But I’m not just a man. I’m the president. “If Dad finds out I’ve been with you, he might guess that it’s been me feeding you information. Sure, he might’ve already laid the blame somewhere else. But he might guess, and if he does, daughter or not, he’ll kill me. He killed my mom, Spike!”

  Tears flow down her cheeks. I feel like the biggest prick in the world for making this woman cry. But I also feel like the biggest prick in the world for letting Danny get killed, and all the other men. I also feel like the biggest prick in the world for letting the Scorpions walk all over us. There’s no winning.

  “He killed your mom, fine,” I say, speaking slowly. “He’s a bastard, he’s evil, but when you get down to it, your mom wasn’t his wife; your mom was just a woman he was with a long time ago. You’re his daughter, Yazmin. That’s gotta make a difference—”

  “Maybe I could play him, maybe, if I really tried,” she interrupts. “But I’m shocked, Spike. I’m just shocked that you’d want to put me at risk like that. These past couple of months, I’ve felt certain there’s something between us, and then . . . this.” Her shoulders deflate.

  “I thought you hated me,” I mutter. “Past couple’a months? Talk about the past couple’a weeks. You’ve been cold and—”

  “Being cold doesn’t mean I hate you.” She laughs without humor. “Don’t you know anything about women?”

  I close my eyes, shake my head. “We’re getting off topic,” I say. “I’ve told you what’s happening and that’s what’s happening.” I sip my beer.

  “So that’s it, is it? You’re just going to tell Dad that you have me? You’re just going to possibly sign my death warrant like it means nothing?”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you, Yazmin.” I try and reach across the table to her, but she pulls her hand away and stands up.

  “Don’t touch me,” she says. “You don’t understand the situation at all. You don’t even care to understand the situation at all.”

  “The situation is this,” I say, voice tight. I hear my words tremble and wonder why I sound so angry. Maybe it’s because she’s being difficult, or maybe it’s because I wish I could remake the world so that we weren’t having this conversation. I wish I was just a man and she was just a woman, and there was none of this club shit, and we could just sink into bed together. “The situation is this,” I repeat, losing the thread of my thoughts for a moment. “Snake is killing my men, killing officers as young as twenty. Maybe the bloodshed hasn’t reached cataclysmic levels yet, but one day soon it might. I can’t see any other way to stop it.”

  “You’re not listening to me!” Yazmin cries. “How many times do I have to tell you? Dad doesn’t love me. He has never loved me. He won’t care that you have me. He won’t bargain with you.”

  “Even if what you’re telling me is true, that doesn’t mean he won’t bargain for you. Even if he doesn’t love you, it’ll still make him look damn bad to have his daughter kidnapped and do nothing about it. He’ll be forced to do something, otherwise his men’ll snigger behind his back.”

  “If he knows I was with you,” Yazmin says, struggling to stay calm, her hands shaking, “he will hurt me. I don’t know how much simpler I can make it.”

  I lean back, closing my eyes, trying to get a handle on the situation. I can’t get Danny’s corpse out of me head; Danny, a brave kid who was eager to do his work in the club, the kind of kid we needed if we were going to last more than one generation; and he was killed like he was nothing.

  “I’m pregnant, Spike.”

  At first I think I’ve heard her wrong. Pregnant, I think, repeating the word in my mind. Pregnant, she didn’t just say pregnant. Then I hear her breathing getting faster, feel her watching me, sense her waiting for me to speak. She did just say it, then. I open my eyes to Yazmin looking at me, waiting for a response. Her eyes are so full of expectation and hope that I struggle to return her gaze. Pregnant, a child . . . Suddenly this basement, the whole club, seems like a dirty, dark place, no place for a mother, no place for a child.

  “And it’s mine?” I ask quietly.

  She scoffs. “Of course it’s yours. I haven’t exactly got a string of suitors down here, you know.”

  “I know,” I mutter. “I was just checking.”

  “Well, it’s a stupid question.”

  “Sure.” I nod. “Maybe it is. So you’re having a baby.”

  “We’re having a baby,” Yazmin corrects.

  I sit with that for a while, not knowing what to make of it, except that it brings into focus something I try every day to keep out of focus. I try not to see it, but it replays in my mind as though a video has just been unpaused. But this is like no video I’ve ever seen, because it has smells too, burning smells, charring smells, smells of blood and flesh.

  “We were on our way to the cabin by the lake,” I say, but it’s more like I hear myself speaking. I sound distant, as though I’m at the cabin listening to this gruff man and this beautiful woman across the water. “Me, my mom, my dad, and Toby. Toby was my little brother. I was, hell, I don’t know, maybe I was ten or eleven. Toby was six or something, still young enough to wear a superhero mask wherever he went and think nothing of it. We were late for some nighttime barbecue thing they do every summer and Dad was getting antsy. He was driving way too damn fast but none of us noticed because Toby was reading out a story he wrote in school, about a superhero who fights off a band of bullies. I remember Mom and I met eyes when it was finished, both agreeing that it was a decent story. Without words, you know.

  “I reckon you can guess what happened next. Fucking pothole, somethin’ as simple and mundane as a pothole. If he was going slower, it wouldn’t’ve made any difference to our journey. We would’ve looked at each other and laughed and carried on. But that day, at that speed, it made a difference. The car bounced into the air, skidded right off the road into a tree, the whole hood crushing, trapping Mom and Dad up front. I was scared, terrified, but Toby was crying so I had to get him out of the car. I had to move fast, ’cause he was my little brother and that was my job. The problem was that when Dad’s seat got crushed it had moved back and trapped Toby, pinning his legs. That was when I saw the bone sticking through his torn jeans.

  “I was sick all ove
r myself, big chunks right down my front, but I kept pulling on Toby, even when he cried, begging me to let him go, telling me I was hurting him, I kept on. I kept right on until Dad snapped at me. I remember what he said to me word for word. He was calm, Yazmin; he was so calm for a second that I forgot there was anything wrong. I remember Mom gargling, thinking it was a joke, wondering if she was making that noise to try and cheer Toby up. But mostly I remember Dad. ‘Okay, Spike, okay, listen to me. I want you to go to the side of the road and go to that payphone we passed, you see it, just down the road . . . Dial 911, okay? Everything’s going to be all right if you can do that. But do it now. Right now.’

  “I thought he was just angry at me for not going for the phone sooner. But when I got out of the car, I knew he’d lied to me. He knew he was trapped; Mom was dead; even poor Toby was trapped. Dad knew all that, but he knew I wasn’t trapped. He knew I could get the fuck out of there. And he must’ve heard the gas dripping into the engine, or guessed that something like that might be happening. Mom always was nagging him about that goddamn check engine light. I wasn’t halfway to the phone box when I heard the first flame. By the time I got back there, the whole car was on fire and my family was screaming. Toby’s screams were the worst of all. My name, over and over, begging me to help him. I tried, but it was too hot. So I called 911 and waited. I waited and waited and finally they came, but it was too late. The car was a blackened hull and my family was burnt to a crisp. When they brought Toby out, I remember asking one of the firemen to get his superhero mask. ‘He doesn’t like to go anywhere without it,’ I told them. I guess it must’ve burnt up in the fire.”

  I down the rest of my beer, shocked at myself for speaking for so long. I’ve kept that story buried within myself for years. Yazmin is crying, I realize after a moment, sniffling and wiping her face with her sleeve. “Spike . . .”

  I stand up. I can’t be with her right now. The pain is too present. “I never thought I’d have a family again,” I say. “But I guess I’ve got one now. All right, Yazmin. I won’t tell your dad about you. I’ll keep you safe.”

  I go to the door, unwilling to look at her. A baby in her belly, a baby which might one day be the same age as Tony, which might live longer than Toby lived . . . A goddamn baby.

  Yazmin follows me to the door, putting her hand on my shoulder before I can leave. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she says. “I know it must’ve been hard.”

  “It’s just the past,” I say, trying to laugh it off. “The past can’t hurt us.”

  Neither of us say anything after that, because we both know it’s a lie.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spike

  I sit in my office with a glass of whiskey, staring at the blank computer screen and trying to imagine myself as a father. I try and imagine myself doing the stuff Dad used to do with me before he died, playing soccer and throwing the baseball around, smiling blandly and giving vague advice about being a good person. When I think of my dad, I get angry. I get so angry I wish I could turn back time and throttle him before letting him get behind the wheel of that car for his barbecue, which was so important it was worth our lives, apparently. I won’t put my kid at risk, not like Dad did.

  There are men in the next room, but the mood is somber. Even from in here I can tell that. Nobody laughs or jokes. They drink whiskey slowly, glasses clinking quietly, and deal cards and talk in hushed whispers. Danny was popular around here, and they killed him. People aren’t happy about that. Too much bloodshed. I knock back the whiskey and pour myself another. I wonder if the kid’ll be a boy or a girl. A boy, I reckon. I wonder if he’ll have Yazmin’s blue eyes or my green eyes. I wonder if he’ll prefer books or bikes. I wonder if—I stop myself. I can’t get soft just because I knocked Yazmin up. I have to remember who I am. I have to remember my responsibility.

  “We ought to kill every damn one of ’em!” Knuckles roars in the next room. “We ought to sneak up in the dead of night and slaughter ’em like animals. Why not? We’re stronger than those fucks. We’re tougher than ’em! I’m tired of this sneaking around shit!”

  “The boss has a plan,” one of the men says quietly.

  “Does he?” Knuckles snaps. “Right now, it doesn’t seem like it!”

  I sigh, standing up. I don’t want to go out there and get on Knuckles’ case for talking about the boss like that, but that’s one of the downsides of being president. I have to discipline the men, even when I agree with them. I drain the whiskey and go to the door, putting on my boss face, forgetting about the news of life in the basement.

  Knuckles is on his feet, standing near a small circular table, Justin sitting on one side and Alfred and Red-Eyes on the other. Kieran McCarthy, the man promoted to replace Danny after his death, is almost as big as Knuckles. He has shoulder-length black hair and a squinty stare. But he’s a solid man. Right now he watches Knuckles with a sideways smile on his face, as if he doesn’t know whether to be amused or confused. That’s something, at least. They haven’t all turned on me.

  “Is there a problem?” I ask, causing the men to snap their gazes to me, the officers at the table and the men dotted around the room, all of them looking to me in surprise. I’ve been in the office since before they came in, so a lot of them had no clue I was in there.

  Knuckles looks the most surprised, swallowing with a loud gulp and shaking his head. “There’s nothing wrong, boss,” he says quickly. “We’re just upset about Danny, is all.”

  Knuckles is a big bastard, a scary bastard to some, but I can tell he’s scared as he waits to see what my reaction is going to be. He watches me the same way men watch wild dogs, waiting to see if they’ll attack, wary and careful.

  I nod shortly. “We’re all upset about Danny,” I say. “He was a good kid. He didn’t deserve to go out like that.”

  I return to the office, going to my desk. The clock seems loud today, ticking obnoxiously, each minute counting down to the officers’ meeting. Soon Knuckles and the rest of them will be looking to me for answers. They’ll expect me to have a plan, something to tear control away from the Scorpions. But even after disrupting their shipments and stealing their weapons and merchandise, these pricks still hit us more than we hit them. Maybe Knuckles is right. Maybe it’s time we go to war.

  All too soon, it’s time for the meeting. I clear out the bar, making everybody leave except for a couple of pledges to serve drinks. I sit at the head of the table, Alfred to my left, Justin to my right, and then Knuckles, Red-Eyes, and Kieran spread around. I notice that Kieran sits up straight, adjusting his leather. This is a big moment for him, I guess. Later he’ll lie down with his girl and tell her about the big meeting he had, sitting there with the all-important president, the famous Spike Macklin who always knows what the fuck he’s doing. I almost laugh, before I remember where I am and stop myself.

  I have to focus on the men, the club, even if all I can think about is a growing life that might give me a second chance at family. There’s a weight in my chest where there wasn’t one before, heavy, tugging me down. It’s a weight I haven’t felt since I was a kid, when I was concerned about staying out the extra half hour so my mom wouldn’t get worried, or when I told my friends to go on without me because I was babysitting Toby. It’s the weight of family, the knowledge that whatever I do now has effects beyond myself. And if there’s a measure of restriction in this feeling, there’s also a measure of comfort. I will have a family. I will mean something. I will experience love. But I can’t get soft. I won’t let myself.

  “Boss?” Justin says. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, realizing I’ve been staring off into space. I turn to the table. “We’re here to discuss any ideas we have about stopping the Scorpions from fucking us over every chance they get.”

  “Firstly, boss,” Knuckles says, “I just wanna say sorry about before. I shouldn’t run my mouth off like that when there’s men about, I know. But what I said, I meant. I think we need to do som
ething big. We need to do somethin’ the pricks can’t ignore. We need to take these assholes down. I’m tired of ’em killing our boys. And I know what you’re gonna say. They have more men than us. Fine, but we’ll have the—whatdycallit—the element of surprise.”

  “What about the girl, though?” Alfred asks, and the weight in my chest gets that little bit heavier. “Has she told us all she knows? I’m guessing she has, since we haven’t done anything big this past week. So what now? We just going to let her stay down there, a permanent guest? Shouldn’t we use her in some way?”

  Since it’s the old man who’s spoken, the men feel they can nod in agreement without risking anything from me. Red-Eyes twists his lips into a small smile, his eyes flickering around from one man to the other. “I’m sure all of us can agree that Yazmin Lafayette is a nice girl. Many of us have spoken to her when guarding her outside. But we can also all agree that Yazmin Lafayette is no good to us if she isn’t helping us against the Scorpions. Maybe in peacetime we can be kind and giving and all that, but this is wartime, and in wartime we have to be tough. I think we should use her as a hostage, tell Snake we have her and use her to make him back down.”