In Self-Defense

by A. W. Gray

  Sharon narrowed her eyes. “What did you say?” Two women at a nearby table interrupted their conversation to turn and stare. Sharon knew she was speaking too loudly, but at the moment didn’t give a damn. “Say that again,” she said.

  Fraterno lowered her eyes. “Nothing.”

  Sharon drummed her fingers, then folded her hands in her lap and lowered her voice. “I’m only going to say this one time, Kathleen, and I don’t really know why I’m telling you this much. I’ve never said one word to anyone about Milton Breyer. Period.”

  Fraterno look up slowly. “You say.”

  “That’s right, Kathleen. I say. I talked about what happened between Milt and me to Russ Black, during my job interview, and then only because I was worried about how it might affect my job. And you can bet your sweet ass that Russ hasn’t told anybody else. The only reason anyone knows what went on is that two lawyers happened to be looking into the witness room when Milt reached out and tweaked my breast. I confess I may have overreacted a bit, but the next guy who grabs my boob when I don’t invite him to is liable to be walking doubled over just like Milton. And for you two to try to railroad this poor teenage girl into prison just because Mr. Breyer has his feelings hurt … Well, the two of you should be in jail instead of Midge Rathermore.”

  Fraterno sat up indignantly. “Now, don’t be accusing me. This murder case was in the mill long before you became one of the defense team.”

  “I’ll grant you that,” Sharon said. “But as far as I know, your office wasn’t withholding evidence until Milt became the prosecutor and I went to work for Russ. Oh, to hell with it. I’m glad we had this conversation. At least we know to go ahead with our motion for examining trial.” Sharon stood and scooped up the check from the table. “My treat, Madame Prosecutor. See you in court.” She stalked to the cash register, nearly running over two busboys on the way, and was so testy in handing over her American Express card that the woman behind the register asked if something was wrong with the food. Sharon had even forgotten that the salad wasn’t up to par; she shook her head at the woman, signed the ticket, and left with her eyes front and her spike heels clicking angrily on corridor tile. She’d climbed out of the tunnel and proceeded a half block down Main Street before the blood pounding in her temples had slowed to where the traffic noises penetrated her ears.

  Sharon was so angry that she nearly walked past the portrait shop on her way back to the office. Landers Photography was a narrow storefront on Elm Street and difficult to notice, and it was only when the aerial shot of downtown Dallas caught her eye from the display window that Sharon realized she’d passed the entrance. She doubled back, said breathlessly, “Pardon me,” to the man with whom she almost collided in her about-face, and entered the store. She dug in her purse, presented her claim check to a fiftyish woman in a print dress, and stood first on one foot and then the other while she waited for her order. As she hefted her purse up onto the counter, lunchtime pedestrian traffic paraded back and forth outside the display window.

  You’ve blown your cool, dopey, Sharon thought. Throwing a fit in front of Kathleen Fraterno would only add fuel to the fire. Sharon pictured Fraterno and Milt—the revolting bastard—laying up in the old sack together as Kathleen said, “And then she grabbed the check, tee-hee, and then twitched her butt on out of there, tee-hee, and then, oh, Milton, don’t ever stop doing that.” Sharon’s mouth tugged to one side as she tried to figure a way to turn the restaurant scene to her—and Midge Rathermore’s—advantage. She didn’t see any way. The saleslady showed Sharon a curious look as she returned from the back and laid a wrapped package up on the counter. “Everything all right?” the lady said.

  “Fine. Just fine.” Sharon turned on a smile, which required more than a little effort. The woman smiled in return. Sharon picked up the package and turned it around. “Mind if I have a look?”

  “Be my guest.” The woman was a grandmotherly early sixties with gray hair and rosy cheeks, and wore wire-framed Mrs. Santa glasses. “You must be proud of that. Who took it?”

  Sharon ripped thin white paper and looked at the natural pose of herself, Oreo cookie box held in front as she ascended the steps to Russ Black’s office. The photo shop had done a corker of a framing job, plain chrome siding with a dull plastic, nonreflecting insert to protect the picture. “Just a guy I met,” Sharon said. “Strangest thing. Do you really like it?”

  “I wouldn’t say if I didn’t,” the lady said. “If you know how to get in touch with the photographer, I’d like to talk to him about doing some things for us on a contract basis.”

  “If I ever see him again, I’ll tell him,” Sharon said. “I wonder if he could take a portrait of my daughter. She’s eleven. I think this guy could do a good job on her.”

  16

  Bradford Brie had every intention of making contact with Sharon Hays, and very soon. Anybody who had it in for Wilfred Donello could expect to reckon with Bradford Brie, and could expect that they would not enjoy the reckoning. It was the way things were with guys who’d been close in prison. There was a bond for life. To his way of thinking, the fact that Bradford Brie bent over and grabbed his ankles for only one man in this world said all about the relationship that needed saying.

  Antsy as he was to get his hands on Sharon Hays, no way was he going to be stupid about it. A dumb guy, maybe one of those Aryan Brotherhood types who talked a good game but were the stupidest cons in the joint, one of those guys would have gone in after the woman just a day or so after poisoning her dog. Doing that would be dumber than shit, Brie thought. The woman was no moron, and right after she’d lost her dog her guard would be up nine miles high. Likely right now she had the black-and-whites cruising by her place two or three times a day. It would take a couple of weeks for the police to lose interest and go to goofing off, which was what squad-car cops did best of all, so Brie decided to leave Sharon Hays alone for a while. Let her cool down for a time, that was the smart way to go about it. Then, once she’d gotten to thinking that things were back to normal, boom. Hit her before she knew what the hell was going on.

  Brie regretted that he hadn’t been able to hang around and watch the German shepherd die. Brie had intended to watch every delicious second—old Fido galloping dumbass out into the yard, wolfing down the meat, then dying nice and slow while kicking and clawing at the dirt—and had even loaded down his pockets with film and brought his camera along. Just as dusk fell, he’d tossed the four-pound hunk of meat and bone over the fence, gristle and sinew peppered with strychnine, spinning lazily through the air to land, rebound, then settle on the grass. Brie had at first wanted to use arsenic, but had read up and learned that strychnine would put more wrenching pain in the shepherd’s gut. With the hook baited, Brie had sat down in the alley, camera ready, and waited for the shepherd to come outside and die.

  But an elderly woman had scared Brie away. The photographer still couldn’t understand it, a wrinkled old broad, seventy-five if she was a day, screwing around in her flower bed across the alley from the lawyer lady’s house. What in hell had the old crone been doing outside at that time of day? Brie wondered. The woman had worn baggy pants and a huge sunbonnet, and had been puttering around her rosebushes, shears in hand, a snip here and a snip there. She’d paused in her work and, hands on hips, had gaped at Brie across her low picket fence. The woman’s eyes had narrowed under her hat brim, and she’d set her wrinkled lips in a line of disapproval. Brie had pretended not to notice the old broad, had just sat there fiddling with the adjustment on his camera lens, all the time measuring the height of the picket fence, certain that he could vault over into the old woman’s yard in half a second. He’d nearly gone after her, too, tensing his muscles for the charge, but just as he had risen into a starting crouch, she had turned from her rosebushes and headed for her back porch at top-speed waddle. Brie had plenty of experience in casing burglary prospects, and if there was anyone who knew when one of the
neighbors was headed inside to use the phone and report something suspicious, that person was Bradford Brie. He had actually risen, put his camera aside, and had taken a couple of steps toward the old lady’s fence when the man had appeared.

  Brie had about crapped in his drawers when the wrinkled old fart had come out through the woman’s back door. The old man, stooped in the standard aching-back posture, had waited on the porch as the woman approached. She’d set down her basket of roses and gestured with her shears in Brie’s direction, talking to the old man a mile a minute. Christ, even as old and helpless as the couple had been, there was no way that Brie could have taken care of both of them. He didn’t have a gun—no way was a smart ex-con like Bradford Brie going to be caught with a piece on him—and while he was using his bare hands on one of the old people, the other would be inside calling the law.

  So Brie had decided to split. He’d left at a fast walk, scooping up his camera and adjusting his sunglasses on his nose, and had actually smiled at the old couple as he’d whistled his way down the alley in the direction of his car. See, old folks, nothing to worry about, just a man out here taking a few pictures.

  Once inside his beat-up old Chrysler, Brie had taken a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and had a talk with himself. Christ, but he’d wanted to feel the old woman’s neck in his hands, hear the soft pop of bone as her windpipe collapsed, watch her eyes bulge from their sockets, her tongue poke out of her mouth as she gasped for air. But killing the old woman would have ended all chance for Brie to make contact with the lawyer lady, so he had bided his time. As he’d driven away, he’d been careful not to exceed the speed limit.

  Aside from giving Sharon Hays a cooling-down period after the loss of her dog, Bradford Brie had other things to worry about. He was almost broke. Money had been good before Wilfred Donello had gone to jail, but since his conviction, Brie had yet to earn a dime. He needed money. It would require some travel, but Brie knew exactly where a man handy with a camera was always in demand.

  So, on the morning after Brie tossed the poisoned meat into Sharon Hays’s backyard, he tooled his LeBaron over to Pep Boys’. There he hovered over the mechanic while the worker changed the oil, changed the filter, and replaced all of the hoses under the Chrysler’s hood. Brie didn’t like the size of the bill, and let the assholes at Pep Boys’ cashier’s desk know about it. Christ, but those mechanics were a bunch of crooks. With the LeBaron in road-worthy condition, Brie traveled south on I-35. As the Dallas skyline grew smaller in the rearview, he sang over and over the only Spanish-language ditty to which he knew the words. The song was “La Cucaracha.” Brie’s voice cracked occasionally as he sang, and he couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. What he lacked in style, he made up for in enthusiasm.

  Two weeks later—at the precise instant, in fact, when Sharon Hays entered Landers Photography to pick up her picture—Bradford Brie stepped on a cockroach. Crunch, take that, you hideous fucker. Bug bone snapped. Brown juice squirted on the sole of Brie’s shoe and sprayed the nasty linoleum floor. Never in Brie’s life, not even in the Texas Department of Corrections, had he seen so many roaches. Christ, he’d been living with the bastards.

  Brie wiped his shoe on the pink throw rug as he stepped closer to the bed to aim the camera. The bed posts were rusted iron; cotton stuffing poked out here and there from the mattress. One filthy sheet lay on top of the mattress in a crumpled pile. On the bed were two naked people, a bearded olive-skinned boy in his twenties and a girl of fifteen or sixteen. The girl’s skin was midway between black and brown. Her belly was taut, and there were pale stretch marks on her abdomen. Her long hair was black and greasy, and showed dandruff like oily flakes of snow. Springs creaked as she bent to take the boy’s erect penis in her mouth. Her breasts hung; her big brown nipples touched the mattress.

  “Not too fast,” Brie said. “We don’t want him shootin’ off, not yet.” The button on the camera clicked, the room filled with instant blinding light. Brie reached out to adjust the portable screen, moving it closer to the bed. “’At’s it, honey,” Brie said. “Take it on down. Deep-throat that fucker, atta babe. Jose. Hey, Jose, you gotcha a real seen-yor eater here. Seen-yor eater, get it?” Click-flash. Brie cackled, lowered the camera, raised the camera again, and squinted through the viewfinder with one pale-skinned eye. His sunglasses lay on a scarred table with the eyepieces folded over.

  The girl continued to take the boy’s penis in and out, in and out. She raised one lid and regarded Brie with a bored brown-eyed stare.

  The Hispanic man who was seated beside the table yawned. He had a Fu Manchu mustache and goatee, and wore faded, ripped jeans along with a skin-tight Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. The shirt rode up to reveal a round, taut belly. A whirring video camera was beside the man, mounted unattended on a tripod. One bright light was on a stand by his shoulder, its beam directed on the bed. “Them pipple don’t understand what you’re saying,” he told Brie.

  “Maybe not, Jose.” Click-flash. “Maybe not, but they know what I’m telling ’em. Come on, darlin’, you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself. Me and old Jose ain’t paying for no deadass pussy. You want to get paid, you put something in it.”

  The girl redoubled her efforts, rising up on her haunches, the movement of her head accompanied by a slurping noise. A drop of perspiration rolled around her waist, leaving a rivulet in its wake, and dripped onto her thigh. The boy on the bed put his head back and closed his eyes.

  “See there?” Brie said. “They understand good, Jose. It’s the universal language, you know?”

  “My name is Guillermo,” the man beside the table said. “Le’s don’ be forgetting that chit.”

  “Yeah, okay, I got a bad memory. All the way, Dallas to Nuevo Laredo, I tell myself, fucker’s named Guillermo. I’m bad on that, ain’t I, Jose?” Click-flash. “Yeah, darlin’, yeah. Oh, yeah, work it on out.”

  “Twelve years I been telling you, my name Guillermo. All the time on Wynne Farm, we picking that cotton and chit, you keep calling me Jose. You keep forgetting my name, we liable to have big problems, bro.”

  Brie paused and regarded Guillermo over his shoulder. “We can’t have no disagreements, Jose, we got too much of a good thing going. We get crosswise, we both wind up in the same cell with Wilfred Donello.”

  Guillermo reached up under his shirt to scratch his stomach. “You don’t want to go to no Mexican jail, bro. These joints down here make TDC look like a fuckin’ Hyatt House.”

  “So I hear.” Brie’s nose wrinkled as he aimed the camera. “Yeah, so I hear. But you and me don’t have to worry about that. This here makes a hundred and sixteen rolls of film, Jose. Fifty-eight for me, fifty-eight for you. Tomorrow I’m going back to God’s country. You’re going to owe me thirty-eight hundred Uncle Sam US dollars, any problem with that?”

  “No problem at all,” Guillermo said. “You keep doing good work, you keep getting paid.” He patted the video camera. “I still get the tapes, huh?”

  “All yours, babe. I wouldn’t give two cents for no moving pictures, man. You show them smokers to a crowd, you got too many people talking. These wallet-sizes, you can sell them one on one and never get no heat from it. I told you before, showing them fuck movies is going to get your ass busted.”

  “You leaving tomorrow? I thought you staying another week.” Guillermo scratched his beard and dubiously eyed the video camera, as if he was picturing himself caught in a motel raid.

  “Naw.” Click-flash. “Naw, I got business. Jesus, honey, hold on a minute.” He reached out over the bed and touched the girl’s shoulder. She looked up, blinking in the spotlight’s glare. “Just one little second, hon,” Brie said. “You finish him with your hand. Su mano, comprende?”

  The girl nodded. She wrapped her fist around the boy’s penis and flogged away, her tiny hand looking as if it were encircling a baseball bat. The boy moaned and writhed on the bed.

 
; “That’s right, darlin’,” Brie said, moving around for a better angle, clicking the button. “Go on, go on. Get it, you hear me?”

  Semen spurted onto the girl’s chin and breasts. The boy bucked up and down.

  “Good one. Good wan.”

  Finished with their performance, the couple rose. The girl tore paper towels from a roll, handed a wad to the boy, then used a fistful to wipe herself.

  Brie turned to Guillermo. “Meet you outside here, say, ten o’clock in the morning. I get the money, you get the film.”

  “Right on, bro.” Guillermo’s head tilted in a listening attitude as the girl spoke to him in rapid Spanish. He answered her. The naked boy said something, also in Spanish, and Guillermo answered him as well. Finally Guillermo turned to Brie. “They wonder if you want them tonight. A freebie. These pipple, they busting to please.”

  Brie snapped the camera open to remove the exposed film. He grinned. “Yeah? Sure, why not. The more the merrier, hey?”

  Brie rose early the next morning, scooting carefully down the center of the bed and standing from the end to keep from disturbing the boy and the girl. He’d slept in between the two. The boy lay on his stomach with one hairy leg bent and his knee resting close to his chest. The girl slept on her side with her cheek on the palm of her hand. Brie paused to watch the couple. Jesus, what a scene, huh? He pictured himself, sometime during the night, humping the girl from behind while the boy crawled up between his legs to lick the gringo’s balls. One for the books. Brie crept around the room to retrieve his clothes.

  One of his pants pockets was turned inside out. He considered waking the boy and girl to whip the daylights out of them, then changed his mind. What, fifty bucks? Wasn’t worth the effort, and anybody dumb enough to go to sleep with his bankroll unprotected deserved to lose the money. He went into the bathroom to retrieve the rest of his money, which was encased in Cling-wrap and suspended inside the filthy toilet tank. Back in the bedroom, he stepped into his dirty white pants and zipped them up. His loud Hawaiian shirt smelled of perspiration. He put it on. When he picked up his shoes, roaches scattered in all directions.