Ugly As Sin

by James Newman

  This was what he had to show for it all.

  Dear God, it was so much worse than he ever thought.

  But he might have finally learned to live with it. Since he had found something worth living for.

  †

  “Dad? You okay in there?”

  A rap at the bathroom door. Nick flinched, knocked over a bottle of liquid soap. It clattered into the sink with one of Melissa’s toothbrushes.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, putting everything back where it belonged. “I’ll be right there. Sorry.”

  “I was worried you might have fallen in.” Melissa’s voice was muffled through the bathroom door.

  Nick took a moment to compose himself.

  “Dinner’s waiting, whenever you’re ready. Um...are you sure everything’s okay?”

  He turned his back on the mirror at last, quickly opened the door. As if their roles were reversed: Melissa was the parent, he was her child, and she had caught him doing something naughty. He stepped out into the hallway, wrapped his huge arms around her.

  She had been drying her hands on a dishtowel prior to his embrace. When he released her, she said, “What was that for?”

  “Nothing.” He wiped a smear of pasta sauce from her cheek, licked it off his thumb. “Let’s eat.”

  †

  The apartment’s dining area consisted of an old cherrywood table sitting in one corner of the living room. The table’s surface was scarred with deep gouges that suggested an axe murderer might have used it for practice at some point.

  Melissa apologized as she and her father sat.

  “This is wonderful,” said Nick. “Don’t be sorry.”

  He noticed she had set a third place at the head of the table: silverware, a salad bowl, a dish with a small helping of lasagna in the center. As if for a guest-of-honor who had not yet arrived.

  She caught him looking at the empty chair. “It’s silly, I know.”

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “It’s something I have to do. I always make a plate for her. Even though I end up throwing it out when I’m done. But I can’t help it. I refuse to think of her in the past tense, you know? I won’t. ’Cause that would be giving up.”

  “I understand.”

  She sat there for a few more seconds, staring at Sophie’s plate.

  Finally, she snapped out of it. She picked up her fork, nodded toward the mound of lasagna in front of him. “Dig in.”

  Nick did. And after only several bites he decided that he had never eaten anything more delicious. He knew now why Sophie couldn’t get enough of her mother’s lasagna, why she had asked for it night after night. The kid had great taste.

  Nick watched Melissa pick at her salad, sip at her bottle of beer. Every so often she moved her lasagna around on her plate. Mostly, though, she just drank beer.

  For the next several minutes they ate in silence, save for Etta James in the background, the clinking of forks on dishware, and Nick’s satisfied crunching/smacking (he tried his best to control it, but with no lips this was a feat easier said than done).

  “Well?” Melissa said. “I’m assuming you like it?”

  “Like it? This is fantastic, hon.”

  She glanced toward the untouched plate at the head of the table again, looked like she was about to say something else, but then returned her attention to her own meal.

  Outside the apartment’s single window, the day slowly died. A train passed on the tracks below.

  About the time he set his silverware down, belched into one fist and rested his elbows on the tabletop, Melissa spoke again. As if she’d been thinking about this all along and decided she’d better say what was on her mind while she had the chance.

  “Did you know I came to see you while you were in the hospital?”

  Nick was stunned. “What?”

  “I came to see you. Twice, actually. The first time was right after I heard about what those men did to you. I was at work. I saw the news on the TV above the bar. I borrowed some money from my boss that night, took the red-eye down to Amarillo.”

  Nick said, “Oh, baby...”

  “The second time, you were at Duke. It was after one of your surgeries.”

  “I had no idea. I never knew—”

  “Both times you were fast asleep. I didn’t stay long. I asked them not to tell you that I came. I don’t know why.”

  Nick’s dinner sat heavy in his stomach, like a pile of soggy mulch. He hung his head, ran one hand over his prickly gray buzzcut. “I can’t believe you cared.”

  Melissa reached across the table to touch her father’s hand. “You look like you could use another beer.”

  “Or ten,” he said.

  She laughed. As she headed for the kitchen, she called over her shoulder, “I’ll bring the whole case, how’s that? I might even help you finish it off.”

  “You’re a big girl. I won’t try to stop you.”

  On the CD player, Etta James crooned: “Cling to me, Daddy, and I’ll be strong...we’ll get along...”

  The song couldn’t have been more appropriate. Nick felt a bone-deep chill.

  He wondered if Melissa felt it too.

  †

  His brain felt like it was slamming against the inside of his skull with every beat of his heart. At first, opening his eyes was pure agony, thanks to a beam of bright morning sunlight that stabbed through a gap in the curtains, spotlighting him square in the face.

  A foul taste filled his mouth, coated the back of his throat. This conjured mental images of another intruder breaking into his room in the middle of the night...this time, however, the culprit was interested not in killing Nick Bullman, but making him the victim of a vile prank. ’Cause damned if it didn’t taste like someone had squatted over him while he slept, taken a big greasy dump down his gullet.

  Nick swallowed, winced. Rubbed at his throbbing temples.

  “Christ Almighty...”

  The way he felt this morning, he might have been out on the road again, just ten or twelve hours after a Last Man Standing match with some stiff worker like Chris “The Cannibal” Cartman or Vesuvius.

  “Idiot. Guy your age ought to know better.”

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hungover.

  After they had called it a night at Melissa’s place, he had driven back to his motel room sporting a considerable buzz. While he hadn’t been anywhere close to shitfaced, there was no doubt in Nick’s mind that he would have woken up this morning wearing an orange jumpsuit, size 4X, if Polk County’s Finest had pulled him over. This brought to mind the tragedy that had befallen a friend of his several years ago. A star-on-the-rise named William Denny—“Billy All-American” in the ring—had gone out to a bar one night after his divorce was finalized and drank himself into oblivion. On his way home, Denny’s Charger had crossed over the median and struck a minivan head-on. For the rest of his life, he had to live with the fact that he had killed a woman and her eight-year-old daughter. Nick shuddered as he remembered his friend—a grown man who could bench-press twice his own body weight—bawling like a baby from behind bars. He remembered how Billy All-American had once ranked among the most beloved “babyfaces” in the Biz...but now the marks’ red-white-and-blue-clad hero might never have existed at all. His was a name no longer mentioned by the Global Wrestling Association, lest it tarnish the brand’s reputation.

  Nick forced his mind back to the present, shook his head in self-disgust. “Could’ve been you, asshole...”

  As for Melissa, she’d gotten so drunk she passed out on her sofa. Nick figured it had been a long time coming, with everything on her mind these last few weeks; he couldn’t begrudge her this one night of drowning her problems with alcohol. Before he left her apartment, he had covered her with an old wool blanket draped over the back of the couch. He sat there staring at his daughter for ten or fifteen minutes before finally staggering outside to his Bronco.

  Now he shook his head again, swung his legs over the sid
e of the bed. He wiped crusty sleep-stuff from the corner of his right eye. Shot a glance at the clock on the nightstand: 8:48 a.m.

  The phone rang.

  The sound was like shards of broken glass stabbing through his eardrums, digging through the meat of his brain.

  He reached over, knocked the phone off its cradle. Stifling a burp that threatened to turn into something worse, he bent to retrieve the dangling receiver.

  “What is it?” he growled into the phone.

  “Mr. Bullman? ’Morning.”

  “Sheriff.”

  “I’m calling to tell you that it looks like we might finally have a lead.”

  Nick stood, too quickly. He swayed on his feet.

  “Last night around one a.m.,” Mackey said, “a drugstore about nine miles from here was broken into. A small, family-owned place called Boden & Sons, in Tryon.”

  Nick paced back and forth. The phone’s cord stretched tight between the receiver in his hand and its cradle on the nightstand.

  “He came in through the back. Busted out a window. He knew exactly what he was looking for, never even touched the register.”

  The sheriff didn’t have to tell Nick what the burglar had been after. The big man knew. Instantly. It was an act of desperation, this robbery. But it wasn’t one of those drugstore smash-and-grabs you read about in the papers—some punk looking to score a few bottles of Oxycontin or Xanax. He remembered what Melissa had told him that day at the diner, about how her daughter suffered from epilepsy, and the medication Sophie took to keep her seizures at bay...

  “Lamictal.”

  “Got it in one,” said the sheriff. “Son-of-a-bitch cleaned out their entire supply.”

  Who are these people? Nick wondered. They obviously don’t mind killing to achieve their goals...so why do they appear to be taking such good care of Sophie? What do they want her for?

  Every possible answer to those questions made Nick feel like vomiting. And not because of his hangover. He covered his mouth with a fist.

  “Here’s where it gets good,” said the sheriff. “The store has a single security camera, above the register. It’s wired into a computer in an office in the back. After hours, the camera is set to record only when it detects movement.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Nick. “You got him on video.”

  “I’m telling you he practically posed for us.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Nick said again.

  “There is, uh, one more thing.”

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s gonna sound crazy. But I saw it with my own two eyes.”

  Mackey hesitated.

  “Mr. Bullman...if I didn’t know better, I’d think the man on that video was the same man who tried to kill you at the Sunrise Motor Lodge. The man we both watched get zipped up in a body bag, and loaded into the back of that ambulance.”

  †

  “Holy shit! Yeah, I’ve seen him. I have seen that dude!”

  Leon had been slouching in a chair in one corner of Nick’s room, his yellow moped helmet in his lap. But suddenly he sat up straight, as if an electric current had shot through his lanky frame. The helmet tumbled onto the floor.

  “That’s him alright. Sure as I’m sittin’ here.”

  Several hours after their morning chat, Sheriff Mackey had called Nick again, this time to inform him that the video footage recorded at Boden & Sons’ Pharmacy would be airing on Channel 13’s News At 6. Nick had dialed up Leon right away, insisting that he watch the broadcast; maybe he would recognize the man from the drugstore. Of course, Nick wasn’t surprised to learn that Leon had pawned his own TV a while back. So he told him to come to the MountainView Motel, and they would watch the news together.

  “Don’t be late,” he had strongly suggested.

  Leon obliged, puttering up on his moped a few minutes before six p.m. He wore acid-washed jeans and a T-shirt from a band called Your Kid’s On Fire.

  As the eight-second clip was replayed, a pretty young reporter explained what had happened at Boden & Sons’ Pharmacy in Tryon the night before. While specific details regarding what was stolen had not yet been disclosed, she said, local authorities were asking citizens for help identifying this man who might be connected to the disappearance of Sophie Lynn Suttles. At this point an image of the missing teen—the same photo Nick carried in his Bronco—flashed across the screen, but Sophie’s face was there and gone so fast it was barely more than a subliminal suggestion.

  The reporter rattled off the phone number for the Tryon Police Department before the video was shown one last time. Halfway through, the clip froze, giving viewers a final look at the drugstore burglar.

  Nick and Leon rose from their seats, and stood together in front of the TV like two men captivated by a nail-biting turn of events in some live sports spectacle.

  The man on the screen was hefting a crowbar above his head, preparing to destroy the camera. He was a short, stocky man with a receding hairline, a salt-and-pepper goatee. The store’s cash register was visible behind him, and beyond that tall white shelves stocked with hundreds of pill bottles. A black duffel bag sat beside the register, unzipped and empty but waiting to be filled.

  Nick couldn’t believe his eyes. Sheriff Mackey hadn’t lost his mind after all.

  The man in the video looked exactly like the man who had broken into his room at the Sunrise Motor Lodge...a thug who now lay in the Polk County Morgue with a hole in his throat.

  He was even wearing the same clothes he had worn the night he tried to kill Nick in his sleep: Dark suit. Western-style bolo tie. The only difference Nick could see was his demeanor, if one could judge such a thing from a single image. Where the gunman at the motel had never raised his voice, had in fact seemed almost kind at first (the fact that he had been trying to murder Nick notwithstanding), his doppelganger appeared full of rage in the footage captured by the drugstore camera. His teeth were bared, his eyes wild. His forehead glistened with sweat.

  “Who is this son-of-a-bitch, Leon? Where can I find him?”

  “Can’t help you with his name,” said Leon, “but I’ve seen him around for sure. He hangs out sometimes at the Skin Den.”

  “What the hell’s a skindin?”

  “It don’t really have a name. Everybody just calls it that. The Skin Den. It’s a titty bar off Highway 64, just this side of Morganville.”

  “Tell me about him. Tell me everything you know.”

  “Not a lot to tell. Once in a blue moon, if I’ve got a few bucks to burn or I can con some other fool into buyin’, I’ll drop by the ’Den for a shot or two. Slide some dollar bills in some thongs, watch some asses shake.” Leon gestured toward the TV, but by now the pretty reporter had moved on to a piece about a dog show at the Asheville Civic Center this weekend. “Every now and then, this dude shows up.”

  “How often?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dammit, think, Leon.”

  “It ain’t like I hang out there all the time myself. Maybe once every couple o’ months. I’ve seen him about every other time I’ve been in there.”

  “Is he a popular guy? Big spender?”

  Leon shrugged. “He usually just sits at the same table in the corner. Keeps to himself.”

  “Have you ever talked to him?”

  “Nobody says much to anybody in a place like the ’Den. They’re either lookin’ down at their beer or starin’ up at titties. Usually the titties.”

  Nick was desperate to learn more. He wanted to grab Leon, shake more info out of him. At last, a potential path to Sophie had presented itself. It was vague, obscured by the swirling fog of so many unknown factors, but it was there.

  “What about Eddie? Did he hang out at this Skin Den?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Ever see him talking to the guy in the video?”

  “Now that you mention it, I think I did,” Leon said. “Hey! You asked me before who Eddie worked for. You reckon this guy mighta been his supplier? Maybe wi
th Eddie gone, he’s hurtin’ for cash, and he’s plannin’ to sell whatever he stole from the drugstore!”

  “No,” said Nick. “There’s more to this than what’s right in front of our faces. This thing goes deeper than Eddie playing truck-stop pimp, selling dime bags to you and your buddies.”

  Nick turned off the TV then, took a few minutes to fill Leon in on all of the details not provided by the news program: how the drugstore robbery was connected to Sophie, and how the man who had absconded with the pharmacy’s entire supply of Lamictal appeared to be the same man who had tried to murder him.

  Leon listened, grinding his teeth the whole time. His eyes were huge and alien-like behind his Coke-bottle glasses.

  “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, hoss?” he said when Nick was done.

  “Depends. What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe this dude’s some kinda ghost?”

  Nick didn’t dignify that with a response. Since speaking with the sheriff, he had decided on a more logical explanation: identical twins. But it was uncanny nonetheless, seeing that face on his TV screen...the face of a man whose violent death he had witnessed less than seventy-two hours ago.

  Abruptly, he turned and scooped his keys off of the nightstand.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Leon asked him.

  “Going for a drive. And you’re coming with me. How far is the club from here?”

  “Hit the interstate, you could be there in twenty minutes. Is there any particular reason I have to tag along?”

  “You know this joint, Leon. I’m going crazy just sitting here. My granddaughter needs me. I’ve got to do something.”

  “There’s Bingo at the VFW every Friday night,” Leon suggested.

  “You know what I mean. Come on. I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Leon’s bony shoulders slumped, and as he followed Nick to the door he mumbled, “I’m tellin’ you, dude...before all this is over, you’re gonna get me killed.”

  “Look at the bright side. At least you’ll die happy, get to stick your face between some double-Ds before we throw you in the ground.”