Bad Blood

by Ren Hamilton

  At first the rum trickled into his lungs and he choked. He tried spitting it out as quickly as it filled, but eventually had to swallow to keep from drowning. When the bottle was empty save for an ounce or two, the painted stranger pulled it back and rolled off. Charles turned onto his side and coughed up the burning rum. When he could breathe again, he looked up at his attacker. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the one who’s going to put you out of your misery.”

  Charles jerked back guardedly. The pirate put his hands to his cheeks in an exaggerated gesture of despair. “Don’t look so disappointed! You do want to see your wife again, don’t you?”

  The comment incensed Charles, and he lunged at the stranger, taking him by surprise. He had his hands gripped tightly around the pirate’s neck when a pain ripped through his chest. His lungs seemed to freeze, unable to take in breath. He released his assailant and fell to the floor, gasping, clutching his left arm as agony shot through it in electric waves. Kenny, if that was his real name, stared down at him with a frown.

  “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. Are you having a heart attack?”

  Through his pain and fear, Charles managed to stick his middle finger up.

  The pirate thing put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “No! You can’t have a heart attack! Damn it, Charles. Is there no end to your insistence on screwing up my plans?”

  Charles gasped as invisible cotton stuffed his lungs. In his blurring vision, he saw the visitor in the big red hat lean down to take hold of him. The stranger lifted him to his feet, and Charles hung like a rag doll. “I need your blood, Charles. I thought we established that. Can’t make it look like an accident if you die of a fucking heart attack.” He studied his surroundings then began dragging Charles toward the adjoining sitting room. “Improvisation. It’s what I excel at. Here we go.”

  The murderous Captain Morgan mumbled to himself as he made his way. He seemed panicked now, which was odd since Charles was the one who was dying. By the time the assailant got Charles into the sitting room, his chest felt like it had a giant fireball burning inside.

  The pirate bumped into an overstuffed chair, grunting as he maneuvered Charles’s limp form toward the glass coffee table. Charles knew what was coming, but hadn’t the strength or inclination to fight it. His enemy turned him so they faced each other, so close Charles could feel his breath. “Don’t worry, Mr. Duvaine,” he said, the phony sing-song accent gone suddenly. He looked almost sad. “You’re going to a better place. I promise. I’m doing you a favor.”

  That voice, Charles thought deliriously. Something familiar about the voice. Charles knew that voice. But from where? A haze was forming before his eyes and it was getting harder to think.

  The young man shoved him. His back shattered the glass table as he plummeted through it. A thousand points of pain lit up on his flesh as he hit the floor, crunching the broken glass beneath him. He’d bought that table in Paris. Strange thoughts to have upon dying. He’d been on vacation with Marie at the time. Marie had loved Paris.

  His killer leaned over him, pulling a quart-sized container out of his jacket. Charles couldn’t imagine what he was going to do with that. Take his blood? What on earth for? He would never know. He felt the life draining out of him, spilling onto the floor along with his poorly pumping blood. His killer knelt down, moving in close. Charles forced himself to look up into those painted eyes. Just for an instant, he thought he recognized those eyes. Then, as the stranger moved even closer, he was sure that he did.

  “You!” Charles gasped.

  “Goodbye, Charles.” He took the ridiculous hat off in a gesture of respect.

  “You!” Charles whispered again. Then the haze thickened, blotting out all light, and Charles was gone.

  Chapter One

  The locals called it Death Row. The street ran through one of those cityside neighborhoods that insisted on calling itself a suburb despite the silhouettes of the downtown buildings on the horizon. Trees caged in iron baskets sprouted from the sidewalk every five feet. Elderly women shuffled into antique shops, their brittle arms linked for support. All in all, Death Row wasn’t a bad street. The unflattering nickname was derived from the glut of funeral homes that clogged the string of cafés and quaint specialty stores.

  At the end of the road atop a rolling hill of manmade lawn, loomed the Shady Rest funeral home, where the wealthy serviced their dead. Like a palace in a village of huts, the polished Victorian looked grossly out of place and contradictory to its purpose. With its neon green lawn, white flagstone paths and fancy trim work, Shady Rest looked nothing at all like a funeral home, which was probably the idea. Silly really. No patron was going to forget why they were there, no matter how welcoming the place looked from the outside.

  Out behind the Shady Rest, well hidden by a lilac bush, Patrick Obrien fell to his knees and lost his breakfast all over the neatly groomed lawn. His friend Shep stood over him. “Jesus Obrien,” he said, his face pulled into a sour grimace. “Are you okay?” Shep’s tone tried for concern but was closer to disgust. Patrick lifted his head just enough to sneer over his shoulder.

  “I just vomited behind a funeral home, Shepherd. Does that sound okay to you?”

  “Again,” Shep corrected. “You just vomited behind a funeral home again. This is the third time this year, pal.”

  Patrick could have done without the reminder. His unnatural dread of funeral homes was not his proudest attribute. A towering redhead with an athletic build, he rather enjoyed the tough guy image his appearance evoked. Six foot three and full of muscles, yet he was reduced to a sick, quivering mess before every wake. As an Irish Catholic, he understood the need for a church ceremony, but the purpose of the wake was beyond him. He’d never understood how displaying the cold, shriveled remains of a loved one should assist the grieving process. His stomach lurched at the thought of going inside, where death waited, spread out on a bed of satin.

  “Get up, Obrien. You’re ruining your suit,” Shep said. Patrick wasn’t used to looking up at Shep, who was a good five inches shorter than he was. Contrary to Patrick, Shep was lean and wiry, with smooth boyish features that made him look far younger than his twenty-eight years. With his sandy, chin-length curls, and a strand of beads around his neck in lieu of a tie, one would never guess that Shep was independently wealthy. Patrick wondered fleetingly if he himself would look more like Shep if he didn’t have to work in an office. Not likely. The hippie surfer thing just didn’t look right on men Patrick’s size.

  Patrick shook his head, still fighting the nausea. “I’m not going inside. I can’t.”

  “You have to,” Shep said.

  “I can’t, Shepherd! Look at me. I can’t even stand up. Go on without me. I’ll meet you outside after the service.”

  Shep frowned down at him. “Don’t be a tool, Obrien. Joey’s our best friend. Don’t you want to pay your respects to his dead father?”

  “Can’t I pay my respects from out here?” he asked hopefully.

  “You have to go in and kneel before the coffin. You know the drill.” Shep’s mention of the coffin sent a toxic shudder through Patrick and he doubled over, gagging. “Here, smoke this.” Shep handed him a thin white cigarette shaped like a broken finger.

  Patrick looked up at him. “You want me to smoke pot before going into Joey’s father’s wake? Are you nuts?”

  “It will soothe your stomach and it will relax you.”

  Patrick shook his head. “No way.”

  With hands on his hips, Shep scowled down at him. He was trying to look forceful, but with his cherubic curls and boyish face, it wasn’t a look he could pull off easily. Only Shep’s true friends knew the weight behind his seemingly innocent gaze. Shep’s docile appearance was a guise for the ruthlessly manipulative little bastard he could be. “Obrien, it’s a proven fact that marijuana cures nausea. A couple hits of this and your gut will feel good as new.”

  Patrick gaped. “Sure, good as new. I’ll also be s
toned at a damned wake! You know I have a phobia. The weed will only intensify it.” Another cramp groped him and he doubled over, holding his gut.

  Kneeling down, Shep rubbed Patrick’s back, waving the joint under his nose. “Joey needs us. We have to go inside. We’re all he has left now.” Patrick looked miserably at Shep. “We have to go inside,” he said again.

  Patrick nodded grudgingly. Unfortunately, Shep was right. Their friend Joey had hit a patch of bad luck. His father, Charles Duvaine, was the third and final family member to croak on him in under a year. Some whispered of a curse, as they always did when multiple tragedies struck one family. Joey seemed to be handling the deaths well, however. Too well, in Patrick’s opinion. His demeanor, when not cold and robotic, was light and cheerful. Patrick supposed it was a defense of some sort, but he couldn’t be sure. He knew nothing about death personally. All of his grandparents were still alive and he’d never even lost a pet. Still, there was something inordinately peculiar about Joey’s lack of emotion in the face of all this death.

  Patrick remembered studying Joey at his mother’s funeral, then at his brother’s funeral three months later. It was the same show at both, Joey standing with his hands linked at his waist, smiling easily as if attending a garden party. Three dead in a year and Patrick had yet to see him shed a tear.

  Peculiar or not, Joey was his friend, and Patrick needed to be there for him. Damn it. He loved Joey, but sincerely wished his family members would stop dropping like flies in a freezer. He found the wakes excruciating, physically and mentally. But he supposed that was what true friendship was all about, the willingness to suffer for the other’s comfort.

  Screw it. He took the joint from Shep and lit it, inhaling the sweet, skunky aroma. With the second hit, his stomach was instantaneously soothed. A dreamy relaxation spread through his limbs and the morning sun seemed a tad brighter, the grass a shade greener. Shep stood patiently behind him, a satisfied smile edging his lips.

  Patrick was eventually able to stand, pleased that he could once again look down at Shep. Shep smirked up at him, a hint of restrained mischief in his wide green eyes. Shep tried to be a good friend, but he had an obsessive inclination to taunt Patrick at any given opportunity. It was part of his personality, one of the many things that made Patrick want to strangle him. “Just promise you won’t mess with my mind when we get inside,” he said. “Promise me, Shep, or I’m not going in.”

  “Obrien, you wound me. I would never do such a thing.”

  Patrick was tempted to reiterate, but he knew it would make no difference. If Shep decided to play on his hindered mental condition, then nothing Patrick could say now would stop it. It was a gamble either way. Shep had a disturbing ability to talk Patrick into things that under normal circumstances he’d never agree to. In his private mind, he called it ‘The Shep Factor’. If Shep jumped off of a bridge, would Patrick follow? He supposed it would depend on how skillfully Shep argued in favor of the act.

  The wake was in one of the larger viewing rooms, which pleased Patrick since he didn’t have to walk past the corpse right away. He and Shep mixed themselves in with the suits and black dresses that formed a slow parade toward the coffin. His eyes were drawn to the cocoon of flowers at the rear of the room, and he glimpsed a well-dressed cadaver resembling the late Charles Duvaine. He averted his eyes.

  Joey stood to the right of the coffin, greeting the line of mourners as they came. He looked spectacular in a tailored suit, his short black hair slicked back, accentuating his pointed cheek bones and ice blue eyes, a brilliant contrast to the dark lashes and tanned skin. Joey Duvaine was the best-looking man Patrick had ever seen, and it played on his tender ego despite their ten-year friendship. The jealousy was unwarranted and unprovoked, but his mind concocted it against his will. Joey was perhaps the least vain person Patrick knew, which made it tough to justify the childish thoughts. Especially now that the poor sap had lost his entire family.

  He watched his tragic friend shake hands with each new mourner that came down the line. Just before Joey’s mother Marie died, the first in this series of horrors, Patrick had secretly wished something bad would happen to Joey. He hadn’t had anything so grim in mind as the elimination of Joey’s entire family. He was thinking more along the lines of Joey’s wise mouth finally getting his ass kicked at the bar, or perhaps getting reprimanded at work for showing up late every morning. But that would never happen, he knew. Joey was special. And Patrick was not. It was something he’d learned to live with. For the most part.

  “Oh man. He’s all alone,” Shep said, following Patrick’s gaze. The mourners approached Joey, whispering tearful condolences in his ear. He received them alone, a family of one. He had a couple of aunts and a cousin left in his dwindling family, but they were nowhere in sight. “Come on, Obrien,” Shep said. “Let’s go up there.”

  Joey’s fake smile widened and became genuine when he saw his two friends walking toward him. “I’m so glad you guys are here,” he said. “This is about as much fun as a rectal probe.”

  “How are you holding up?” Shep asked.

  Joey shrugged. “I’ll be better when my father is in the ground and my ass is on a bar stool.”

  “Do you want us to stand up here with you?” Shep asked, smoothing a misplaced lock of Joey’s hair, a mothering gesture.

  “No way. I wouldn’t wish this duty on my worst enemy. I’m not about to rope my best friends into it. You guys go on. I’ll catch up to you at the reception at my Aunt’s house. You guys will be there, right?”

  Damn. Patrick had planned on skipping the reception. He looked into Joey’s eyes and they were uncharacteristically sad. Patrick felt a stab of guilt for passing judgment on him. “We’ll be there. I promise,” he said before he and Shep moved on, following the line of mourners in a slow shuffle toward the casket.

  The people gathered in the room wore matching, pinched expressions. They were waiting for it to be over so they could go get a vodka tonic, or some other denial-inducing drug. Speaking of denial, Patrick glanced back at Joey, who was telling an off-color joke to a man in a plaid suit. The man threw his head back and laughed.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Shep asked, following Patrick’s gaze.

  “He seems a little too okay if you ask me.”

  “Well that’s a shit thing to say! Joey handles grief in his own way, so lay off him.”

  “Is his own way not to handle it at all? Look at him, Shep. The man is an iceberg.”

  Shep’s lips tightened. Joey’s family had taken Shep in as a foster child at age fifteen, saving him from years spent in a hellish social service system. In Shep’s eyes, Joey could do no wrong. He leaned into Patrick. “Who are you to judge? Huh? If your entire fucking family died, you’d get a little cold hearted too.”

  “He’s not right, Shep. You know he’s not.”

  “Joey is fine. You’re always looking for the downside of things.”

  “Oh really? So what’s the upside to all of this? That Joey has a nice short Christmas list this year?”

  Their whispers were elevating, and a few people glanced their way. Shep pulled Patrick closer and lowered his voice. “Why do you keep harping on this? Would you rather see Joey snap?”

  Patrick tugged his arm back. “Maybe I wish he would snap. I’m more afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t. He’s bottling everything up, it can’t be good for him.”

  “Cut him some slack. This really sucks for him. He’s just not showy about it.”

  Patrick wanted to cut Joey some slack, but Shep hadn’t been with them yesterday when he drove Joey out to his father’s beach house in Forest Bluffs to help pack the place up. Charles had made the beach house his permanent home after he “went off the deep end” as Joey put it. It was roughly a year ago that Joey’s mother was killed in a hit and run accident. For a time, it seemed Charles would carry on bravely.

  Then Joey’s brother Jeffrey was speared in the neck by a rogue arrow from some unknown hunter
’s bow in the deep woods of Maine. His young friends discovered him a half-hour later, unconscious and nearly bled out. By the time they got him to a hospital, it was too late. Joey tried for months to draw his father out, but the once-dynamic businessman had become a hermit.

  Charles ignored the phone and dead bolted the door, refusing to answer even when Joey drove out there from Boston and pounded on it. Some of the neighbors told Joey that his recluse father was having pizza and rum delivered to the house daily, but no one ever saw him in person. No one saw him, that is, until last week when two women from a cleaning service responded to a call Charles had made. When the doorbell brought no response, one of them peered through the front window and saw Charles on the floor.

  The autopsy showed he’d had a heart attack, brought on by excessive alcohol abuse most likely. Joey’s aunts blamed the heart attack on the stress of losing his wife and young son so suddenly. Shep, a devout vegetarian, blamed it on the high cholesterol content in the pizzas. Patrick had thought the act of packing up his father’s beach house would be therapeutic for Joey. What a fucking mistake.

  The smell hit them as soon as they opened the door. The place was littered with rotting food, pizza boxes, and empty rum bottles. Rodents scurried into corners, their free-for-all interrupted by Patrick and Joey’s intrusion. In a stunned sleepwalk, Joey stepped over debris, with Patrick trailing behind like an overgrown shadow. Joey said nothing. He simply stared at the hovel, his handsome face an expressionless mask save for a small, arrow shaped scowl between his eyebrows.

  Patrick had followed as Joey glided into the little sitting den off the front living room. He’d stopped before the destroyed coffee table and stared down at the deep maroon blood stain on the carpet. The police, having seen all the blood, had originally thought Charles was murdered. Ultimately they re-thought this, concluding instead that the wounds on his neck were caused by shards of glass broken away when he fell through the table. Murder or no murder, the stain was the most upsetting thing Patrick had ever seen.