Dominic

by Mark Pryor

  I lingered on the scene for a couple of reasons. Mostly I didn’t want to have to tell his sister what we’d found. Whom we’d found, sorry. This was one of those times when I looked closely inside myself and tried to feel something. For her sake, but also as a test of my own condition; because if there was one kid I should feel bad about being killed, it was Bobby. Yeah, he’d been impetuous, stupid, and headstrong, and he ignored my advice, but he couldn’t help any of that, just like I couldn’t help being the way I am. And I’d wanted to help him, to help his sister. Get him into adulthood, for fuck’s sake—that at least.

  Two detectives headed up the investigation, best I could tell, and I didn’t know either of them. That didn’t matter, I walked right up and introduced myself. They’d want a statement from me as one of the two people who’d found him, but they might also like having a prosecutor on scene, just in case.

  “We’ve been looking for this kid,” the male detective said. “Found his GPS monitor in a drainage ditch a few days ago; he must’ve cut it off. His probation officer had no clue where he was. Anyway, we’re waiting for Sergeant Brannon to get here.”

  “This has to do with Detective Ledsome’s murder?” I asked.

  “Well, let’s just say Brannon was real interested in talking to this kid about it.”

  “Damn. I guess it makes sense. . . . They said a kid shot her. This kid?”

  “Maybe.” He nodded toward the house. “And looks like he decided he didn’t want to face the music.”

  “You’re thinking suicide?” I asked.

  “Gun’s next to the body, one shot in the head. Seems like a fair bet, but we’ll look into it.”

  “What about the disturbance call, people being in the house?” No one seemed to care about that anymore.

  The cop laughed. “Probably a few kids looking to get high, stumbled in there and saw him tucked behind his mattress and took off. Long gone by now and hardly our biggest problem.” His face went serious. “Unless they contaminated the crime scene. Goddamned kids.”

  I leaned against the hood of Thiago’s car, which was nice and warm with the engine still running, and thought about it. Suicide. I supposed it was possible, if unlikely. Generally, the things that drive people to kill themselves don’t exist in people like me and Bobby. Guilt, remorse, pessimism about the future. Put another way, we’re the center of our own universes, and everyone else’s, in our minds, and so why would we destroy the only thing on the planet that matters: us? My life had gotten pretty shitty a few times, but I’d never considered biting down on the end of a gun barrel, not once. I’d be happy for others to die to make my life better; that wouldn’t bother me in the slightest, but to take my own life? Not that.

  On the other hand, the things that prevent empaths from killing themselves are absent with us, too. We wouldn’t care about devastating friends and family, nor do we have any religious compunctions holding us back. And there’s our impulsiveness. Right there, a drive toward impetuous, dumb behavior could have been enough to make Bobby pull the trigger. An idiotically irreversible swipe at me for telling him what he could and couldn’t do, maybe even at his sister. The gifts of foresight and an awareness of consequences are not our best traits, especially when young. And a reckless kid who knows he’s going to prison for the rest of his life . . .

  Whatever happened to Bobby, I figured his sister would likely blame me, or at the very least prefer some time alone. For me, I get bored alone and could use the distraction, the entertainment that comes with bullying a lesser human being. Well, I should rephrase: bullying an actual human being. I called Brian McNulty, wondering just how much he wanted to be my friend.

  ◯

  BRIAN

  “It’s late, Dom. I was going to bed.” Me in my pajamas when Dom came calling, it was becoming a theme.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “Much, thanks. Still a little tired, but I may actually head into work tomorrow.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “That’s partly why I’m calling,” he said. “I forgot to cancel your ride-along, so I just took your place. I’m out with them now.”

  Like a cuckoo, was my first thought. “That’s OK. Having fun?”

  “You know. A nice mix of excitement and boredom. Pleasant change from the office, though, no doubt about that.”

  “Oh, so I guess you’ll be off tomorrow,” I said.

  “Yep. Figured I better let you know what I was doing, so Terri or someone else didn’t tell you, worry you that I was stealing your job.”

  “I appreciate that, but I don’t think I’d have jumped to that conclusion.” Except it was my first thought. Not very nice of me.

  “So, dude, I’ve been thinking. That poker party may not be a good idea.”

  My heart sank. “Why not?”

  “Sometimes when we play, we get a little crazy.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. You and I, we’ve not been close friends or anything. I’m pretty private, so my fault. But we respect each other, right?”

  “Yeah, Dom, sure. Absolutely.”

  “It’s just that I’d hate for that to go away, for something to spoil that. Especially with you about to be a judge.”

  “We’re just playing for fun, the money isn’t related to the poker. I get that, it’s not a problem.”

  “Oh, no,” Dominic said. “It’s not that at all. Like I said, sometimes we cut loose a little.”

  Something, to be entirely honest, I have a very hard time doing because I worry a lot about what people think of me. In the past, Dominic’s called me uptight, and I’d have to say that he’s right. That’s part of why I want the judge job so much, I think: people will respect me more, at least I’ll be a little more confident.

  “Dom, I promise. Unless you’re doing cocaine or hiring prostitutes, I’m game.” And maybe even then, I thought to myself. Maybe.

  “Well, I guess I can let you make the call.” He laughed, like he was a little embarrassed. “I just don’t want you to think less of me for even suggesting this.”

  “I promise, I won’t.”

  “All right, then.” He took a breath. “So, like I said. We get a little crazy. Very. And the thing is, we all have high-pressure jobs, responsible jobs. We’re all single, or at least unmarried. And way too old to be doing crazy shit, so we make sure we just do it together and not in public.”

  “What happens at poker stays at poker,” I said.

  “Yeah, precisely. Maybe you do get it.”

  “Dom, it’s OK, I do. And I feel like you’re already making excuses, but I’m not gonna judge you.” The truth was, I loved that he was opening up to me like this. I wanted him to tell me something nuts, something extreme. I wanted whatever it was to shock the hell out of me.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll cut to the chase. We have themes for each card game. Like, we all have significant others, so one weekend we all had to show each other pictures of our ladies naked.”

  “Oh, man, like candid shots?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “Connie would kill me! But yeah, I’m with you.”

  “That’s why it was candid; I don’t think any of our girls would’ve gone for it. Anyway, this next game it’s Russian roulette.”

  “Whoa, seriously?”

  “Yes and no. We’re not going to use a gun, spin the chamber. Nothing like that, we don’t have a death wish.”

  “So how does it work?”

  “Each of us has to bring something, then we draw lots to see who does what challenge.”

  “Like what?” I asked, intrigued.

  “I don’t want to give it all away, just give you an idea. So the thing I have to bring is a paintball gun. They have them like revolvers, so whoever ends up with it will wear a paintball mask, spin the chamber, and maybe shoot themselves in the face.”

  “That could still hurt. A lot.”

  “Right?” he sa
id. “But no permanent damage. I thought of that one.” He sounded proud, and it did seem a little extreme, but without being lethal.

  “So what would mine be?”

  “Last man in always gets the worst assignment,” he said, but lightly like it wouldn’t be that bad.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You have to bring a benzo, one that’s used as a treatment for anxiety. Whoever ends up taking it will be fucking hilarious.”

  “Oh.” We saw kids with benzos all the time, usually snagged from their parents. Using them was against the law if they weren’t specifically prescribed for you. And even though I hated to, I knew I had to draw the line there. A prospective judge couldn’t be breaking the law. Apart from maybe a prostitute, and the truth is I’ve always wondered what that’d be like. But not drugs. “Dom, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Illegally provide drugs. Possess them, even. Ask me to do something else.”

  “It’s not my call, and everyone has their job. This is yours.”

  I didn’t like doing this on the phone, I wanted to look at him, try to read his eyes. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who took orders from others, but then I didn’t know his friends, who or what they were. I sure wanted to find out, though.

  “A prospective judge can’t be dealing drugs, Dom, you know that. Something else, ask your friends.”

  “It’s not dealing drugs, not even close. You’ll obtain them legally, and since you’re not selling them, there’s nothing illegal about it.”

  “How about I bring along a prostitute.”

  Dom laughed. “Where the hell would you get one of those? One of the scrubbers from South Congress? Backpage.com?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t, and I felt stupid for suggesting it. “Anything but drugs.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “And some HIV-riddled whore is your ‘anything but’?”

  “I was just trying to think outside the box,” I said.

  “Well, don’t. In or out, matey; I’m sorry, but you play by the rules or you don’t play at all.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he snapped. “The new guy doesn’t get to change the rules. You need to make a decision.” His tone softened. “Like I said before, it’s a specific drug and you can get it legally. You won’t be breaking the law, Brian.”

  “How about I give you the money, pay for it, and you get them. You know, since you know what we need and all that.”

  The moment I said those words, I was disappointed in myself. I sounded like a coward trying to get someone else to do something I was too chicken to do. Not sounded like, that’s exactly what was happening. I’m pretty sure I went down in his estimation when I said that, and I know I went down in mine.

  But it’s funny. When Dominic mentioned the two-grand buy in, that seemed like a big deal at the time. I mean, it’s a lot of money still; but it’s my money, and I can do what I want with it, pretty much. Legally speaking. But drugs are different, and I wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth about the legality of buying and providing benzos, even if he had a particular brand or whatever in mind.

  If it was so easy and legal, why was it the worst task, the one given to the new guy?

  So I had to decide, and from the way he sounded, I had to decide right there and then. Not my strength. I thought about the judge position, the responsibility of that job not just while I wore the robe but in conducting myself off the bench. The way I acted, the way I spoke to people, the way I comported myself in my day-to-day activities. Playing in high-stakes poker games kind of went with the old-fashioned image of a judge with his buddies, smoking cigars and swirling whiskey in crystal glasses. That I was fine with. Kinda cool, actually. But judges didn’t go buying drugs from who-knows-where and handing them around, taking them to some kind of Russian roulette game that unknown people, probably underemployed musicians, devised for their amusement.

  Whiskey is one thing, drugs quite another.

  Problem was, I wanted something else just as much as that robe. I wanted to be Dominic’s friend. I wanted to be someone he invited to these get-togethers, to do wild and slightly crazy things with long-haired hipster musicians who toked Mary Jane while I turned a blind eye and they told inappropriate jokes. I wanted that judge job, yes, but I’d lived too much of my life isolated, without close friends. Certainly, without close cool friends. Taking that robe would be a step away from cool, Dom’s kind of cool anyway, a step away from being fun and reckless and getting stupid on Saturday nights.

  Plus, I wasn’t a judge yet. Not even close, and maybe I wouldn’t be.

  I knew this would be my last chance to grab that lifeline, to be someone other than the square, responsible, likeable Brian McNulty. Judge Brian McNulty, even. Same ordinary guy with a slightly shinier pen.

  And in that moment, I wanted one thing more than I wanted the other. Just for once. Just this once.

  “You said a specific benzo?” I asked. “A legal one.”

  “Yeah, it’s called Flunitrazepam.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “That’s probably a good sign.”

  “Wait, if it’s legal . . . why would you say that if—”

  “Take a breath, Brian, for heaven’s sake. It’s legal, I’m messing with you.”

  I did take a breath. “Can you text me the name?”

  “Flunitrazepam,” he said again. “Spelled the usual way. Just Google it. It’ll have to come from Mexico or Canada, so do it soon.”

  “Oh. You’re sure it’s legal?”

  “The only thing I’m sure of is that you’re a broken record. I already said it was.” I heard the smile in his voice. “That is, if you get it from abroad.”

  “Abroad?”

  “Yeah, you know. Foreign countries. Abroad.”

  “I don’t understand.” I didn’t. Was I supposed to travel to Mexico or something?

  “It’s pretty simple. It’s illegal to sell it here in the US. It’s legal to buy it, which means you get it from somewhere that isn’t the US.”

  “How?”

  “Jesus, Brian, do I have to do this for you? Online.”

  The last seconds, the final chance to pull out, tell him it was too much hassle, too dangerous, too stupid. Tell him whatever, maybe that I just didn’t want to do it. Tell him, now or never.

  “OK,” I said. “I’m in. Online it is.”

  “Good chap. Hey, I better run, we’re on the move.”

  He hung up, and I felt a surge of pride. Not only was Dominic including me in his poker game, his high-stakes poker game, but I was also in on their special dare. I wondered for a moment who else would be there, but I had absolutely no idea. Musicians? Movers and shakers? Cool people, to be sure. Maybe even people who could help me get that judgeship. He did say that they all had high-pressure, responsible jobs. It felt like I’d wangled an invitation to a private club, and that had never happened to me. Ever.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE GIRL WITH THE LIME-GREEN DRESS

  I was never under any illusion as to who Dominic was, any more than I doubted my own brother’s hollow nature. I had an inkling as to how my brother saw me though, there was that difference. Dominic? Harder to read.

  When I first saw him, I was at a bus stop, wearing a green dress and red heels. He noticed them before he noticed me; but everyone did, so I didn’t mind. I’d seen his picture in the papers a few times, gone to see him in court in disguise. Well, not really a disguise, I just tried to look plain. He never noticed me, but I saw him exhibit the traits that Bobby was developing.

  My God, men are so easy sometimes. Even the greatest manipulators, the incredibly smart ones like Dominic, even they are like babies looking for a tit to suck, literally: unsubtle and desperate.

  That’s why I kept him at arm’s length for so long—close enough to keep him intrigued, but not so close that he’d get bored of me. I’ve slept with him twice in all the time we’ve kn
own each other. That kills him, and I love it. But I’m aware how tenuous my hold over him is; he doesn’t see me as his girlfriend, or a girl at all. I’ve read the literature, and I know that the closer we become, the quicker he’ll turn and walk away.

  For Bobby’s sake, I can’t let that happen. Not yet. Bobby had basically stopped listening to me or anyone else, and I figured the only person he might respect would be someone like himself. So, yeah, that whole heist business a while back was my idea to glue Dom to us for a little while. The murdering side of it made me sick, but in retrospect I was an idiot for thinking they’d play nice. That Dom would play nice.

  Not a mistake I’ll make again.

  That’s a bad habit of mine, making mistakes for other people. I’ve only been in trouble with the law one time, a conviction for possessing crack cocaine. It was Bobby’s, of course; he had a couple of baggies he was selling downtown. I’d gone to pick him up, to stop him doing it, but the cops showed up when I did—I guess they’d been doing some kind of operation out there. I took the rocks from Bobby to save him getting in more trouble. At that point he didn’t have a felony conviction, and I didn’t want him to have one. I failed to consider what one might do to my future, though.

  Quite a lot, as it turns out. Having a felony in the job market is a little like entering the dating pool with herpes, as I explained to Dominic.

  When he showed up late that night, Thursday, I knew it was over for Bobby. The way Dom was looking at me as I let him in, he had a look of curiosity on his face like all he was interested in was how I might react. Only one reason I could think of for that.

  “I’m sorry,” he started. “There’s no way say to say this to you.”

  “Did the police catch Bobby?” I heard the catch in my own voice. “Or is he dead?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Dom and I stared at each for a long while. I wanted more than ever to see some flicker of life in those eyes; I wanted the mirror to crack and show me something that wasn’t a reflection of my own emotions. I think that’s why I didn’t cry right then—I didn’t want him to make some fake effort at copying me. And maybe in that moment I wanted to feel even less than he did. I sat at the kitchen table; he sat opposite me.