by Thomas Pluck
Jay collected dirty glances as he skipped the line. He brushed past the chunky usher at the door. “I’m family.”
A crowd filled the viewing room. Curt nods, eyebrows perked in sympathy as friends caught up and smiled in the corners. The furrowed brows of those eager to curry favor with Strick the younger. The chatter faded into hushed whispers when Jay walked down the center aisle toward the stately casket.
The family sat in front on burgundy armchairs. Ramona’s mother a prim and plastic statue, her dad a silver-haired smiler. Ramona on Matthew’s left, his mother on his right. Their daughter, Saoirse, a deer in the headlights. The wood of the armchair creaked beneath Matthew’s clenched fists.
Jay knelt before the closed oak box, his face distorted in the gleaming lacquer. He placed a hand on the cold brass furniture. Confusion twisted in his brain like a headless rattlesnake. Hate for the man who’d abandoned him, and raw sorrow for closing the door to a past he never knew existed. He folded his hands, closed his eyes, and thought of what to say to a God who had never listened to his pleas and prayers.
I live in spite of the cold son of a bitch, Okie had laughed. Jay had never given God much thought. The Witch said He was always watching, planting an image in his young brain of God as the giant atop the beanstalk, fathomless in both size and enormity, a complicit observer in the world’s pain.
This old man sowed what he reaped, Jay prayed. I know you got the same in store for me. Until that day comes, you stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.
Jay held still a moment to see his words off into the void. He stood and turned to a silent room watching him like a magnificent and deadly creature that had stepped out of its cage.
Ramona held her face neutral and stroked her daughter’s hand. Matthew twisted a handkerchief in his lap and bored through Jay’s belly with red-shot eyes.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jay said.
“Jay,” Ramona said. “Please don’t.” Saoirse leaned to whisper to her, and she patted the back of her hand.
Matthew swallowed. “I thought you’d be decent enough to leave me to my pain,” he said. “You’re not wanted here.”
“I belong here at least half as much as you do.”
“You destroyed my family,” Matthew said through gritted teeth.
“Thought I was family.”
Matthew’s mother stared ice. “This isn’t the time or the place to air dirty laundry.”
“I ain’t no pair of dirty drawers,” Jay said. “You both knew, all these years. And you let me rot in there. Didn’t lift a finger.”
Ramona’s eyes registered confusion. “What are you talking about?”
The crowd murmured and stretched to watch.
“Someone get him out of here,” Matthew said, wiping his brow.
Brush Cut appeared on Jay’s right and clenched his wrist in an arm lock. Jay’s shoulder burned. “I’m going. Unless you want a scene, let me walk.”
The guard eased his grip.
“Please,” Ramona said, “Just go.”
Jay bent toward Matthew. “You might want to have ’em do an autopsy. Been digging around, and I think Leo Zee might’ve punched his ticket.”
“Please leave.”
“My real father’s been dead five years now. So forgive me if I’m not so sorry for your loss,” Jay said. “Brother.”
Matthew tackled him around the waist with a ragged scream. They tumbled into the coffin, thunking off the wood. The room spun and Jay’s stomach churned. He guarded his face as bony fists rained down.
“You’re not my brother, you white trash piece of shit!”
The guards pulled Matthew toward the hall, his mother following with a prescription bottle. Jay stood and brushed himself off. Ramona clung to Saoirse. The little girl stared at the wolf who walked out of her fairy tale book.
Jay shouldered through a crowd of gasping faces blanked with fear and wrenched with disgust until he crashed through the storm door into the parking lot.
Chapter 39
Jay crashed on Tony’s recliner, and woke to an empty house. He found a note scribbled on the pizza box saying Tony had left to open the shop. He took a long shower, hot and cold. The only towel smelled of garlic. He looked for a fresh one and found the bedroom door locked. He left wet footprints through the hallways until he found a scratchy towel in the pantry. Looked at the mess in the bathroom mirror and washed down a jumble of painkillers with an energy drink from the fridge.
Over the days, the curtain of pain slowly lifted from his world. He worked on the Challenger between jobs until it resembled a battered, beloved toy a child kept digging out of the trash can.
Tony walked over, holding a tightly wrapped sub sandwich like a policeman’s baton. “Roast beef and mozz,” he said. “From Cavallo’s.”
Jay unscrewed the dent puller from the sheet metal. “Got my hot cherry peppers?”
“Of course,” Tony said. “I got a fiberglass hood we can slap on. Some fucker keyed it at the ShopRite. Nicky, I bet.”
“I paid him back for you. Gave him four flat tires, and beat his ass blue.”
Tony grinned and took a bite of his own sandwich.
A white van rolled onto the curb. Jay hefted the dent puller, ready to whip the screw-tip end.
A woman in a tan pantsuit stepped out of the passenger’s side and walked to the back of the van.
Tony frowned while he chewed.
The woman walked backward toward them on the sidewalk, followed by a man in khakis shouldering a camera rig.
“I bet it’s those ‘Shame on You’ people,” Tony said. “That Beemer jerkoff.” As the newswoman approached, Tony puffed up and folded his arms, trying to look tough. Jay thought it looked like he was squeezing out a shit.
The woman stuck the microphone in Jay’s face. “This is Jay Desmarteaux, the Nutley axe murderer. It’s been twenty-five years since you went Lizzie Borden on your classmate. Why did you return to the scene of the crime?”
Jay wiped his hands with a shop rag. “This is where I grew up.”
“Hey, he did his time. Leave him alone.”
“Are you Tony Giambotta? What possessed you to employ a violent criminal in a neighborhood full of children?”
“This is private property. You’re trespassing.” Tony reached for the camera lens, but the cameraman sidestepped, centering on Jay.
The newswoman circled him. “Is it true you’ve been frequenting a Newark strip club alleged to be owned by organized crime figures?”
Jay pointed at the cars. “I’m a mechanic. Just trying to make a living.”
“Some are saying that the family of your victim has been denied justice. What do you say to that?”
“This is old news. I’ll give you something fresh.” He twisted the microphone out of her hand.
Jay stared into the camera’s squid-like eye. “Joey Bello was a no-good rapist son of a bitch, and he needed killing.”
“Cut the mike!”
“The cops and his father covered it up. You want to hear all about it, I’ll be at our high school reunion this weekend.”
Jay tossed the microphone and she caught it.
She mouthed asshole before the cameraman cut back to her. “As you can see, prison has not calmed the demeanor of the man convicted of what is perhaps New Jersey’s most brutal killing in recent memory.”
“Who’s paying you, Mayor Bello or Matty Strick?” Jay said. He tucked the shop rag in his back pocket and walked back to the shop.
Later, he and Tony watched themselves on television.
“Convicted killer Jay Desmarteaux now works at a local auto repair shop, not far from where the vicious axe murder occurred. The effects of the murder still haunt the town…”
A loud beeping drowned out her words. The camera jerked to catch Tony hooking the wrecker to the news van.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the newswoman screamed.
Tony hopped out of the tow truck and worked the levers
to raise the bed. “You’re parked on private property.”
“Are you crazy?”
Tony grinned and lowered the forks under the van’s chassis.
She slapped on the side of the van. “Brad, get your ass behind the wheel!”
Jay chuckled. “I swore they would’ve bleeped that.”
The news cut back to the studio, where the perfectly coiffed anchorman nodded gravely. “A frightening scene at a local mechanic’s garage.” A laxative commercial came on, and Tony muted the television.
“They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Jay said, and clinked his Rolling Rock bottle with Tony’s.
Tony went to his mother’s for dinner. Jay walked behind the shop with Andre’s tomahawk. Rusted old wrecks lined the edge of the property, from a ’56 Chrysler with a sumac tree growing through the empty engine bay, to a curvy-hipped brown Monte Carlo with the windows smashed out. Jay walked twenty paces from a thick maple stump. He took a slug from the bottle, and let fly with the axe. It sank deep into the wood. He repeated the ritual until the beer went warm.
A horn beeped out front.
The blue Aston Martin purred quietly, blocking in the Challenger. The tinted windows slipped down like pools of black oil. Ramona stared at him over the wheel.
Jay tipped back the dregs of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash.
“Why didn’t you tell me you and Matthew were half-brothers?”
“I found out a little before you did,” Jay said. “Talk to hubby.”
“He says it’s none of my business,” she sighed. “The bastard.”
“That’s me, technically.” Jay folded his arms, muscles striped with grease like war paint.
“Will you come here? I’m sorry.”
“We’re all sorry,” Jay said. “Poor little rich girl. Get along now. You had your fun.”
“Quit being a dick,” she said. “I thought it would be therapeutic. I wanted to help you.”
“You can’t fix me,” Jay said. “Told you that.”
She backed out and turned in so she faced him. “You’re not any more broken than the rest of us.”
“I know that now. Hell, I’m starting to feel like the most normal of the bunch. You saw what you wanted, and you took it. That’s how y’all are.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I said sorry. In the car, the first time, it felt like when we were kids. Like we could take on the world. Did you feel it? I wanted to give that to you.”
Jay chewed his lip. “Reunion’s this weekend,” he said. “Go with me.”
Ramona winced and shivered as if swallowing bitter brew. She pulled it into a tight grin. “Why in the world would I want to do that?”
“Closure,” Jay said. “Thought you needed it.”
“Some business is best left unfinished. Don’t you want to hear what I came here for? It changes everything.”
Jay climbed into the car.
They ate falafel and shawarma in Jersey City on a bench by the water. She wore jeans and a blue top under a short black leather jacket, some designer’s take on the patched punk jackets of old.
“How does it feel to be comfortably well-off?” she said, and wiped her corner of her mouth with a wad of napkin.
“Matt’s not gonna fight me over it? That doesn’t sound like him.”
“You’re in Strick’s will,” she said. “It’s decades old. There’s nothing to contest.”
“He’ll find something.”
“Not without my help.”
They walked the piers while sailboats cut the bay in the twilight. “Is it true about you and his father?”
She clenched his hand. “You’re not gonna get all weird on me, are you? That was a long time ago.”
“I would’ve done him like I did your uncle if you’d told me.”
“I know you would’ve,” she said. “I didn’t want you to.”
“But you were—”
“It was a transaction,” she said. “I got what I wanted, and he got what he wanted. Think of him as an ex-boyfriend who showed me the ropes.”
“He wasn’t no boy.”
“You’re talking about someone who died naked on a motorcycle,” Ramona said. “He was always a boy. I know it was wrong, and I don’t absolve him of responsibility. I’m just not into seeing myself as a victim.”
No, she wouldn’t admit that, Jay thought. No matter how true it had been.
“I’m guessing you never left him alone with your daughter.”
Ramona smirked. “Of course not.”
She walked ahead, turned around. “He took advantage of a precocious and overdeveloped young girl who wanted to feel like a grown-up.”
“What’s that feel like? Being grown up.”
“I guess you don’t know, do you?” She said. “I used to think I did.”
“Come to the reunion with me,” he said.
“Jay.”
“I’m gonna tell the truth about Bello,” Jay said. “Might need counsel handy.”
“One thing I’ve learned from court,” she said, “is that each person builds their own truth. From what they’ve heard, or seen, or believed from the beginning. Whoever controls the narrative decides what that truth is. And this one was written long ago. You won’t change anything.”
“They’re gonna have to hear it anyway.”
They held hands and watched black waves lap the spangled battleship of Manhattan.
Ramona dropped him off up the block to avoid Tony. Her engine buzzed down the highway as she rocketed away from her past.
A dim light burned in the shop, and the Hulk truck sat in the driveway. A cigarette flared by the Coke machine. Jay caught a face ghost-lit in the glow of a phone. He slipped into the shadows and padded behind the Hammerhead.
Randal’s black Cadillac Tonka truck was parked around the corner.
Jay eased the Hammerhead’s door open and released the compartment. Took what he needed and crept close to peek in the windows at the back of the shop.
Tony lay crucified on a work table, his face swollen and distorted by a mouthful of dirty shop rag. Shirt torn open, chest striped with cuts. One of the skinny-leg gym rats held the Conan the Barbarian sword from Tony’s office wall, and jabbed Tony in the crotch with it. Randal waved him away. He rolled the battery charger closer and clamped a jumper cable to Tony’s left tit.
Gym boy tugged down Tony’s sweatpants and reached in with the other clamp. Randal turned the knob of the trickle charger. Tony arched and rattled the work table with his throes.
Jay hugged the wall and followed the smell of mentholated smoke.
The stocky lookout spat on the ground and frowned at his cigarette. He blinked at the glint of moonlight off the tomahawk right before Jay cleaved his neck to the breastbone. Hot blood splashed Jay’s face and the man collapsed gurgling.
Blood and breath steamed as Jay hunkered down for three more hard chops.
A squeak of brakes as a Cherokee rolled to the curb. Jay reared up with the axe.
“Freeze, asshole!” Billy cleared the distance, Glock aimed in isosceles stance.
Jay held up his hands, a slash of blood across his face. “This ain’t what it looks like.”
Billy drew a bead on Jay’s chest. “Jesus.” He wrinkled his nose and coughed into his shoulder.
“Keep it down,” Jay said. “The hitters are here. They got Tony inside hooked to a car battery.”
Billy pressed his face to the greasy glass, keeping the pistol on Jay. “Let me get backup.” He reached for his phone and stepped away from the building.
Jay didn’t wait.
The door creaked open to Tony’s howls. The thick scent of oil and grease was tanged sharp with blood and piss. A blue Shelby Mustang convertible sat on the lift.
“Give him up, asshole,” Randal said, and killed the juice from the battery charger.
Tony slumped to the table and gasped a “Fuck you.”
Randal punched him in the nose. “You sure it’s hooked
to his balls?” He scratched at his stitched ear.
“You wanna check it, go ahead,” gym boy said.
Randal held Tony’s phone. “All you gotta do is call him.”
“I’m right here, shitbirds.” Jay’s teeth flashed in the dark. He held the lookout’s severed head by the jaw. “So’s your friend.”
Their jaws dropped.
Jay tossed the head underhand, landing it on the work bench. Gym boy shrieked at his dead friend’s mangled face.
Jay hurled the tomahawk and charged. The blade bit into Randal’s shoulder and clattered off a tool chest. Randal swore and ducked, clutching his wound. He flipped the switch and Tony bent backwards with a scream.
Gym boy pawed among the aerosol cans for a pistol.
“Drop the weapon!” Billy fired and sent an aerosol can spinning off the table.
Jay juked right and drew Andre’s knife from his boot while Billy and the gym rat traded fire.
Tony bent in half, sweatpants dark with piss. Jay let Randal get away, and yanked the charger’s plug out of the wall socket. Tony collapsed. “You okay, buddy?”
Randal swiped with a jack handle.
The metal caught Jay across the shoulders and sent him tumbling to his knees. Andre’s knife clattered to the floor. He scrambled after it under a work table. Randal bowed the table in half with an overhead swing.
Randal flipped the table with one paw and cocked back to swat. Jay leaped to tackle and hit Randal’s legs like a wall. Randal laughed and stabbed at Jay’s back with sharp drops of the jack handle.
Billy ducked behind a Honda. The gym rat shattered its windows with panic fire.
Jay shouldered Randal in the groin and sent him stumbling backward beneath the Mustang on the lift. Randal cracked his head on the exhaust pipes and swung the jack handle wide. The edge of the metal tore open Jay’s scalp. Blood in his eyes. Jay pressed his sleeve to it and wobbled to his knees.
Randal ducked under the Mustang and held the jack handle slugger style, smiling. “I’m gonna get made for killing you.”
The hydraulic lift sank with the hiss of a dying serpent. Tony grimaced, holding the button down.
