by Thomas Pluck
Randal swore and crouched to escape the descending Mustang. Jay gripped his ear and popped the stitches like a broken zipper. Randal screamed, jumped with the pain, and banged his skull on the car’s underbody. He staggered and fell as the Mustang sank lower. The jack handle clattered to the floor.
When the gym rat locked back the slide on his pistol, Billy drilled him in the chest with a pair of double taps. The gun hit the floor and the gym rat followed.
Jay scrambled out from under the lift. Randal stared, dazed. He kicked to slide from beneath the car. Jay planted a boot on his face to halt him.
“No!” Randal screamed. “I’ll pay—”
Jay stamped the words out. “Shut up and die, Randy.”
Randal whimpered and tried to bench press a ton and a half of Detroit iron. Juiced muscles swelled for the challenge before his bones cracked with wet snaps. Blood strangled out his screams.
The Mustang wobbled on its springs as it came to rest.
Randal moved his mouth silently, painted black with blood.
“Aw Jesus.” Billy retched into his sleeve.
Tony released the hydraulic lift button and limped toward them. One eye swollen shut, one arm flopping from the socket. His work boots scraped the floor.
Jay pressed a shop rag to the gash in his hair. “How you doing, pallie?”
“What’s it look like?” Tony winced at the shreds of bloody skin around his nipple, like he’d nursed a baby werewolf. “I think I got a strangulated testicle.”
“Who are these guys?” Billy said, frowning at the bodies.
“Frankie Dell’s boys.”
Billy gave him a look. “And why do they want you dead?”
“Maybe Bello hired them. He tried before.”
Tony sprayed a canister of compressed air until the can turned ice-cold, and stuck it in his pants. “Oh…that’s better.”
Jay dropped Andre’s war tools on the table and sprayed them with carburetor cleaner.
“What are you doing?” Billy said. “This is a crime scene.”
“I was never here,” Jay said, and wiped off his weapons. He grasped Tony’s Conan sword with a shop rag around the handle.
Tony furrowed his eyebrows. “Those fuckers chipped it.” He gagged as Jay wiped the bloody neck of the severed head against the sword blade.
“Don’t puke now,” Jay said, and pressed the sword hilt into Tony’s hands. “You’re a hero.”
“Aw,” Billy coughed into his sleeve. “You expect me to go along with this?”
“Call your old man and see what he says,” Jay said, and kicked the head toward the front door.
“I got pains shooting down my left arm.” Tony winced. “Is it that arm that means a heart attack? Or the right one?”
Billy thumbed his Blackberry. “You always got an angle, and it’s always bullshit. How about I call your bluff? What you gonna do then?”
“Try me, see what happens.”
“I was coming to talk sense into you before Bello had you killed. Dad says he’s losing it,” Billy said. “No wonder, with all the shit you been up to. You went to Strick’s funeral, to rub it in Matt’s face? You’re as fucked up as they are.”
“Strick was Jay’s father,” Tony said. “Can we go now? It feels like my left tit’s trying to punch me in the face.”
Billy blinked. “Strick got into your mom’s bikini? Lucky son of a bitch.”
“Mind your mouth,” Jay said. “And no, it wasn’t with Mama Angeline.”
“Then how?”
“Your old man knows,” Jay said. “Ask him.”
The sword clattered to the floor. Tony gripped Jay’s shoulder. “I uh, I don’t feel so good.”
Jay looped an arm under Tony’s shoulders and helped him toward the door.
“Hey, you can’t leave!” Billy said. “What am I gonna tell the locals?”
“Figure something out. Just remember, they call me in, your old man swings.”
Billy swore and held the phone to his ear.
Tony’s legs gave out, and he gripped at Jay’s shirt. Jay buckled under the weight, and dragged him toward the Hulk truck.
“Put some rags on the seats,” Tony said. “I shit my pants. Do tough guys do that?”
“All the time,” Jay said. “I’m packing half a turd myself.”
Tony squeezed his arm as he hunched over the dash. “I’m gonna die,” he cried. “God’s punishing me.”
The truck shuddered over a pockmarked stretch of road. “No he ain’t,” Jay said.
“I ratted on you, pallie. They made me do it.” He pressed his big forehead to Jay’s shoulder. “Leo Zee said he’d kill me.”
“I know, Tone.” Jay took a turn hard and the truck’s rear end skipped over the railroad tracks. “It’s all right.”
“I’m going to hell,” Tony cried.
Chapter 40
Jay and Brendan walked home through the towering oaks of Yantacaw Park where old Italian men wearing shorts and black socks squinted down the sandy lanes of the bocce courts, jabbing fingers like stubby cigars as they argued a play. Tony and Matt had computer club, and Billy had a hockey game. Brendan scanned for groups of older boys. He’d had to quit hockey after Bello vandalized his track trophy; the opposing team started fights by calling him “Brenda,” and the coach said it put Billy, their star player, in the penalty box too often.
“So, did you ask Ramona to the summer dance?”
“Reckon I will,” Jay said. She had been distant. Waves instead of kisses against the lockers.
“I think Dawn’s kind of hot,” Brendan said. “Not Ramona hot, but you know.”
Dawn was a shy, freckled girl with honey-brown curls who wore out-of-style clothes and kept her nose in a book most of the time. She didn’t talk much, but she seemed nice enough.
“She’s real pretty,” Jay said.
“My father says girls are a distraction, that we shouldn’t date until after we take our SATs,” Brendan said. “I don’t care. I’m on the honor roll. I’m going to ask her. You want to double date?”
“Sure.”
As they topped the hill, they passed the baseball diamond and the recreation building where the coaches stored equipment. On the concrete steps, Joey Bello sat smoking, surrounded by the Algieri brothers and Nicky Paladino. Greg Kuhn had switched sides and joined the nerds of the brain trust.
Joey spread his face into a grin. “Hey, faggots.”
Brendan stared straight ahead. Jay flipped them the bird.
“That’s right, keep walking, faggot.”
They did. Brendan shivered with rage.
“You walk like a little queer, holding your ass cheeks together. I bet your ass is so reamed you gotta squeeze all the time or the shit falls right out.”
Nicky whispered something, and the Algieri brothers laughed.
“I bet you and your brother practice blowing each other,” Bello called.
“Shut up, Joey,” Brendan said.
“Shut up,” Joey repeated, in mocking falsetto. “Shut up, Joey! Or what, faggot? Your daddy gonna shoot me?”
Brendan turned, his nostrils flaring.
“None of us are afraid of him,” Joey said. He sucked his cigarette, then spat in the grass. “Big deal, he shot a moolie. My father says he taught you to be a faggot. Calls his mustache the come-catcher.”
Brendan dropped his books and strained at an invisible leash.
“Ooh,” Joey said. “The little faggot gonna fight? Your brother can’t help you now.”
Brendan sneered. “You told everybody Billy gave you the black eye, didn’t you?”
“Shut up, faggot. Shut the fuck up.”
“I bet you did,” Brendan said with a shaky smile. “You cried like a little girl after I hit you. You’re nothing without your friends.”
“Shut your cocksucking mouth!” Bello flicked his cigarette and charged.
Brendan clenched his delicate fists at his sides. When Joey got in range, he threw hard. The
bigger boy flattened him in the pine needles and started whaling. Jay leapt on Joey’s back, but the other boys pulled him away. He clawed and thrashed and kicked until they sat on his arms.
Nicky Paladino hawked up a throat full of snot. He stood over Jay with a dull smile. “Your mom was at the ShopRite. I bagged her groceries and carried them out to the car. Then she jerked me off all over her tits.” He let the loogie drop on Jay’s chest like a load of semen.
Jay snarled and kicked wild. Should’ve kept the hatchet in his bag. Better to be thought crazy than an easy target.
“Nicky,” Bello panted. “Let’s give the homo a lesson.”
Brendan moaned through bloody lips speckled with pine needles. Bello had him on his stomach, one arm chicken-winged. Nicky sat on his back.
Bello drew back his foot and kicked Brendan in the center of his ass. “You love it up the ass, don’t you,” he panted, kicking again and again. He finished with a kick in the balls.
The Algieri boys laughed.
Nicky tugged Brendan’s jeans down, baring white briefs. Joey drew back and kicked Brendan in the crack until his underwear spotted red. Brendan cried into the pine beds.
“The fag’s having his fuckin’ period,” Bello chuckled.
Nicky’s eyes lit and his smile widened. Ice settled on Jay’s skin. The Algieri brothers exchanged glances and stared. The youngest one said, “That’s messed up.”
“Shut up,” Bobby said.
Nicky laughed and grabbed a pine cone. He jabbed the red spot with it. “He likes it.”
Joey snatched it from his hand. “Gimme it.”
Jay couldn’t see. But not long after, Brendan screamed for a long time. Jay stared at the sky with his heart pounding, the clouds foaming red.
“What are you boys doing,” one of the bocce players hollered, walking slow across the grass.
The Algieri boys scattered. Joey Bello gave the finger. “Fuck you, old man.”
Nicky laughed, and they both walked away, slapping each other’s shoulders.
Brendan pulled on his pants. Tears ran freely.
Jay ran after him. “I can get us a ride home.”
Brendan pushed him away and limped toward home. “What am I gonna tell my dad?”
He spent the week home from school, recovering. Missed the track meet vs. Don Bosco, and the team got creamed in his absence.
Chapter 41
Jay woke with a kink in his neck, lightheaded from the ozone scent of oxygen and disinfectants. He’d slipped a nurse a hundred to stitch him and let him crash in an empty room. He floated down the hallways in the soft glow of the overhead fluorescents and the hum of distant machinery. He asked a desk nurse for Tony’s situation. She told him he’d been released from surgery, but only immediate family could visit him in the ICU.
He drove to Tony’s house at the creep of dawn. Looked at his makeshift bed on the couch and staggered to Tony’s bedroom. The door was locked. Jay had thought nothing of it. Andre had put a lock on Jay’s door after they saved him from the Witch. To make him feel safe.
He worked his way through Tony’s keychain until he opened the door.
The bed was a mess, a king size with a pronounced dent in the middle. More words on the walls. Jay recognized the bad guy’s blade from Highlander. A sack of dirty laundry to bring to his mother’s.
Jay swept the sheets back, flipped the pillow. Kicked off his jeans and groaned as he hit the plush mattress. The early morning sun cut through the blinds. Nearly closed his eyes, but what he saw on the dresser popped them open.
He rolled off the bed. It was a black AR-style rifle with the stock removed and a pistol grip forearm. Beneath it were stacks of loaded magazines taped in twos for easy reloading. Pez dispensers full of deadly copper candies.
Next to it sat their yearbook, beneath a wire-stripping tool.
Stacked in an open drawer were six lengths of capped three-inch pipe with wires leading to a single switch.
Jay flipped through the pleather-bound Class of 1989. Faces were exed out in black marker, and a lengthy screed was written on the final page in neat block letters.
“Aw, Tone.”
Big Mindy came running to the fence when the Hulk truck rumbled into the parking lot. The boy pumped his arm like a kid asking a big rig driver to honk the air horn. Jay obliged.
“That’s a cool truck,” Mindy said. “The Hulk is awesome.”
“Hey, fella. Go get Mister Zee, and I’ll take you for a ride.”
The kid ran back toward the group.
Jay leaned against the fender and tapped an envelope in his hands. Mindy dragged Brendan back by the hand.
“You can’t keep coming here,” Brendan said. He wore a school hoodie and a stopwatch around his neck.
“He’s gonna take me for a ride, Mister Zee.”
Brendan flashed Jay a glare. “Mindy, we don’t take rides from strangers.”
“Aw, Mister Zee.”
Jay held the envelope. “Got something for you.”
Brendan crouched and looked in Mindy’s eyes. “If you finish recess with no timeouts, I’ll ask Miss Branigan if it’s okay. But she can say no, Mindy.”
“Okay!” Mindy ran off. A patch of sweat bulls-eyed the back of his shirt.
“I’d appreciate if you didn’t make promises to my kids.”
Jay approached the fence. “They can’t have any fun?”
“They can. Unlike some of our teachers, I go out of my way to protect them. Even from well-meaning people, and themselves.”
“I got something you need to see.” Jay waved the envelope. “When’s your lunch break?”
“I don’t get one,” Brendan said. “I pack a lunch, and we take turns getting fifteen minutes’ peace in the faculty room.”
Jay pushed the envelope through a diamond in the chain link, and leaned on the Hummer’s bumper. The engine ticked as it cooled.
“What is this?” Brendan said.
“Something you need to know about your old man.”
“Billy talked to me already.”
“And?”
“It’s all old news, Jay. It doesn’t matter whether that kid was armed or not. No one’s going to care. You know that town.”
“Open it.”
Brendan smirked, looked back at his students playing tag. He snatched the envelope and unfolded the page inside. He squinted at the pixelated photo and his shoulders pulled taut.
“Reckon Billy told you about the fender-bender your old man got himself in,” Jay said. “I took that picture at a rest area out on the Turnpike a week ago. He got in a wreck trying to catch me.”
Brendan lolled his head forward and stumbled a step. “I should have known,” he cried, and gripped the fence. “Who’s with him?”
“Some trucker.”
“Well thanks for ruining my day,” Brendan said. “Fuck, how did I not know?”
“He’s not strong like you.”
“Billy saw this?”
“Just you, for now.”
Brendan knuckled the corners of his eyes. “Is this your revenge? What’s the point?”
“Mr. Bello knew,” Jay said. “He’s had your father under this thumb the whole time. Joey knew, too. That’s why things happened the way they did. That smirk he always had on his face.”
Brendan straightened. “I don’t even care anymore.”
“It was never you your father hated,” Jay said. “It was himself. I think your grandfather must’ve been one vicious son of a bitch.”
Brendan sighed. “I teach kids here who’ve been through worse. And they’re good inside. They don’t hurt anybody. They don’t make fun of the kids with Down’s Syndrome. So my father doesn’t get a pass, Jay. He knew right from wrong. His job was to enforce it. Don’t apologize for him.”
“I’m not,” Jay said. “I told him about a friend of mine. Was a man, but now she’s a woman. She was halfway, when we met inside. You can imagine how rough her time was. I told Leo she was a bigger man than he
ever was. Because she fights like a pit bull for everyone she calls family.”
Brendan raised a fist. Jay bumped it through the links.
“I’m going to the reunion,” Jay said. “Gonna tell everyone what Bello did to his boy. Will you back my play?”
Brendan looked away.
“Y’all got old-time convict eyes, same as me. Like you been through a war. You’ve all been in your own hell since that night.”
“You don’t think Mr. Bello has, too?”
“We were kids, he wasn’t. He knows what he did. Joey wasn’t born that way.” The fence links creaked inside Jay’s fists. “The lie has to end.”
Turkey tracks formed in the corners of Brendan’s eyes. “I’ll think about it,” he said, and cleaned his glasses on the corner of his polo shirt.
Mindy ran over and hit the fence. “It’s lunchtime, Mister Zee. Can I go for a ride now?”
“What the hell,” Brendan said.
Body Shop Bloodbath, read the headline. The newspaper ran with Billy’s bullshit narrative. Heroic small businessman Anthony Giambotta had been robbed and tortured by three thugs with violent criminal records seeking the combo to his safe and the keys to a custom Shelby GT500.
Jay wondered how long it would be before they made any connection to the sword-wielding hero and the axe murder of long ago. If the truth would work its way out like a splinter, or fester beneath the skin until everyone who knew what happened was dead.
While news vans and crime scene techs swarmed the auto shop, Jay parked behind Clara Maass Hospital. Wearing his suit and carrying a clipboard, he followed a pair of pharmaceutical saleswomen and took the stairs to the open floor of the ICU. Tony lay in bed staring at a silent television. Bruises had flowered on his face and the abrasions turned to orange peel. Jay walked like he was allowed to be there, and no one questioned him.
He crouched by the bed. “How you doing, pallie?”
Tony lifted heavy-lidded eyes and said nothing.
Jay unfolded the newspaper. “You’re a hero.”
Tony shrugged, then winced. He reached for a plastic cup of ice water on the bedside table. Jay held it for him.
