by Anthony Izzo
“You don’t know him,” Paul said.
“He hits you?”
“All the time.”
“Son of a bitch,” Ronnie said. A piece of coconut fell from his mouth.
“Watch your mouth. You don’t want your mom to hear,” Paul said.
“This place is so big she’ll never hear me.” He wiped his mouth. “You going to the Christmas dance?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going,” Paul said.
“Sure. With Jessica.”
“You’re dreaming, bub.”
Jessica was a goddess among girls. A full head taller than Paul, she had honey-colored curly hair and a chest that was the stuff of legend. Paul had lain awake many nights thinking of her, about how it would feel to touch one of her boobs, feel the nipple under his palm.
“I’m not dreaming.”
“She’s loaded, to boot. Her dad’s the president of M and T Bank.”
“Look around, jerky. What do you think bought all this?”
“Money won’t buy you a date. I hear she likes freshmen,” Paul said.
“I can still ask.”
“You won’t,” Paul said.
“Dare me?”
“I dare you.”
“Done deal. Spit shake on it.” Ronnie hawked a glob of spit into his palm and held it out for Paul to shake hands. Paul recoiled, but Ronnie said, “We’ve got to make it official.”
Paul reached out and shook Ronnie’s hand, the warm spit slimy against his palm. When they released hands, Paul wiped it on his jeans.
“I’ll ask her tomorrow,” Ronnie said.
“If you don’t, you’re a wussy.”
“Hey, wanna see my room?”
“Sure.”
Paul followed him down a hallway painted in soft yellows and blues. Gold-framed paintings hung every ten feet, depicting flowers or fruit or women on bicycles. They turned right at the end of the hall, where a white vase with pink roses stood on a table. After that, they reached a spiral staircase and took it to the second floor.
The corridor looked long enough to stretch across the New York State line, and at the end of the hall was a door, looking small as a mouse hole from here.
“Follow me.”
Ronnie led him to the door at the end of the hallway. He gripped the knob and the door opened into the room.
“Check it out,” Ronnie said.
Paul stepped through the door and expected his heart to stop.
“Wow,” he said.
CHAPTER 12
George Kempf popped the lid off the Tums container, gave it a shake, and tilting his head back, popped three of the tablets into his mouth.
“Goddamn flavored chalk,” he said, crunching the antacid.
Lately the ulcers had been gnawing full-time at his guts, and he started to wonder if he didn’t have a piranha swimming around in his belly. His dad had had the big C in his stomach, and it killed him within a year of being diagnosed. Should get that checked out, Big George. He tried not to think about the volcano that was his stomach right now. Kempf had bigger problems to deal with.
There was a pile of papers, forms, envelopes, and crime scene photographs spread out on his desk, which faced a yellow wall. A frosted window leaked air, although with the near nuclear fusion heat the radiator gave off, the air wasn’t that noticeable. The only thing that brightened the room was the photo of the sailboat he planned on buying. White and sleek, with a red stripe down the side and a rainbow-colored sail. It sailed a crystal sea with a big orange sunset bleeding in the background.
When he retired, that baby would be his.
But first there was a murder to solve, and a particularly nasty one, to boot. He picked up the photo of Alan Quinn’s face and looked it over. From the neck up, the kid looked as if he had stuck his face in a lawn mower. The face had been torn into bloody strips, the throat laid open, looking as if it had exploded from within. The M.E. listed the official cause of death as asphyxiation. Whoever killed him slashed through the trachea and cut off his air.
He set the picture aside.
The only other murder that had taken place on his watch was when Tiny Griffin came home and found his wife in an embrace with the Schwann deliveryman. He took his sixteen-gauge off the rack on his truck, chased the guy down the driveway, and blew nice neat holes in his back. Then he went into the house and finished off Linda Griffin. Tiny was doing life in Attica. Linda Griffin minus most of her head was gruesome, but this Quinn murder was ten times worse.
Who the hell would do such a thing?
He stood up, ready to refresh his coffee, when Chief Samuel Ramsey strolled in, inspecting his nails. The overpowering aroma of his cologne filled Kempf’s office, making Kempf’s nose itch. Ramsey sat down in the chair next to Kempf’s desk and leaned his elbow on the desktop.
“How’s it going, Tank?”
“Been better,” Kempf said.
“Oh?”
“This thing is eating a hole in my gut,” Kempf said, and nodded to indicate the crime scene photos.
“I can imagine, Tank.” Ramsey crossed his legs and tugged at his slacks.
He always called Kempf “Tank,” a reference to Kempf’s nickname as center for the Brampton High Panthers football team. When Ramsey said it, Kempf always thought it sounded like “asshole.”
“We can agree this has the potential to be one big mess, right?”
“That’s a given,” Kempf said.
“We can’t let the condition of Quinn’s body get out to the public, right?”
“You know I know that.”
“The last thing we want is a panic,” Ramsey said.
“Where are you going with this?” Kempf asked.
“Glad you understand all this.”
Ramsey straightened his tie and smoothed out his shirtsleeve. “You’re the man I need for this.”
“For what?”
“Got a reporter coming in from the Gazette. He wants an interview, but I’m just too busy right now. So that makes you the interviewee.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Great. Remember to keep things vanilla. The Courier Sun already started a rumor that a serial killer might have strolled into town. You need to deflect that, and give as few details as possible.”
“I really don’t need this right now, Chief.”
“You’ll do fine.”
Ramsey patted him on the forearm, trying to be reassuring but only raising Kempf’s blood pressure by a few notches. On his way out of the office he said, “Make us look good.”
The fire kicked up in Kempf’s belly again and he reached for another Tums.
CHAPTER 13
MacGregor’s whistle cut through the air, and he yelled, “Showers!” This was the official end of practice, and as Chris rose to his feet, Munch said, “Good luck with your dad, Francis.” He laughed as he walked away, his fleshy belly jiggling.
Dad shook hands with MacGregor, the two of them no doubt reliving past sports glories that existed only on the pages of yearbooks. Coach and Chris’s dad were teammates on the Brampton High team that took the state finals in 1967.
Chris wiped his forehead with a towel and started for the locker room, hoping to avoid talking to his father.
“Chris. I want to talk to you,” his dad said.
Chris stopped and turned around.
“Coach said you had some trouble in practice.”
“Blame Munch,” Chris said.
“You shouldn’t have lost your cool.”
MacGregor said, “They were both bumping pretty hard.”
“But getting thrown out—”
“Water under the bridge,” MacGregor said, thumbing his whistle. “At least it shows some fire in your belly. Just don’t do it again.”
“Sure, Coach,” Chris said.
MacGregor could be an ass wipe, but he was a somewhat forgiving one.
“Hit the showers,” Coach said.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Dad said.
Chris opened the locker room door, and the sound of showers streamed in the background. It smelled of old sweat and dirty clothes, with an undercurrent of deodorant and hair gel.
Chris showered, toweled off, and got dressed. Outside the locker room, his dad waited, standing like a cigar-store Indian, expressionless. Right now Chris would rather do six inches for a week than make the ride home with his dad.
They exited the gym through the red double doors, and the wind nipped at them, snatching the door from Chris’s hand. He had to lean his shoulder into it in order to close it.
They made it to the Trans-Am, a late-seventies model, black with the gold firebird on the hood. Chris thought of it as the Smoky and the Bandit car, but he never said that to Dad, because his father hated Burt Reynolds’s movies. The custom license plate read SPORT1 (his Jeep was SPORT2). Chris was amazed he brought his baby girl out in the snow.
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” He ran his hand over the dashboard, the recipient of a recent Armor All job.
“Why’d you bring it out on a day like today? There’s salt all over it.”
“Just for the hell of it. We can go cruising,” he said.
The pine tree dangling from the mirror swung back and forth.
“Reggie B kills me,” Dad said.
“Is that all you listen to, sports talk shows?”
“No. There’s more to life than just sports. You know that.”
“Is that what you used to tell Mom?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Sure it is.”
“Your mother had to have everything her own way. That’s why she left me.”
He flipped on the heater, and warm air whooshed from the vents.
“If you say so.”
“Stop saying that. A guy’s got to have hobbies, interests outside of just family and marriage. Some guys hunt, some play golf, and my hobby happens to be following sports.”
“And betting on them.”
“You’d better watch it, Chris.”
Chris knew he’d hit a sore spot, the spot that eventually became a bleeding ulcer and ruined his parents’ marriage. One Friday afternoon in March after leaving Francis Motors and feeling good because he had pawned off a beater of a Gremlin on an anxious seventeen-year-old, Peter Francis had stopped for a beer at Malone’s. After five or six too many, he had gotten a nip from the betting bug and decided he felt lucky. He took two thousand dollars out of the account of Peter and Wendy Francis, met with his bookie, and placed numerous bets on the NCAA tournament. Lost the whole thing.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. I had it coming. But I’m trying to make things better for you and me, right? Things are picking up at the lot. Hey, I sold four cars today without breaking a drop of sweat on my ass. How about that?”
“Yeah, that’s something,” Chris said.
“I’m working hard, Chris. That’s why I don’t need aggravation like what happened today in practice.”
Here it comes, the big speech.
“MacGregor tells you to do something, you do it. I know that Munch kid is a pain in the ass, but he couldn’t carry your jock. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Getting punished like that is for guys like Munch. It’s embarrassing when you do stuff like that.”
“How do you think I felt?”
His dad paused for a moment, apparently rolling that one over in his mind. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel before responding.
“Of course you were embarrassed. Not just me. But it’s over now, right? Let’s go get some burgers. You want that scholarship to Saint Jerome’s, don’t you?”
“I suppose.”
His legs ached and he felt as if he could curl up on the seat and go right to sleep. He still had homework to do after dinner, and the last thing he felt like doing was getting into a pissing match with his father. A pissing match he would lose.
“Good. Glad you agree. Let’s hit the BK. I’m starved for a Whopper.”
His father gunned the engine and the car fishtailed, the rear end dancing back and forth in the slush. “Pretty good in the snow, huh?”
If he had the energy, Chris would’ve just shaken his head.
CHAPTER 14
The booger would be here any minute. Emma slipped on a gray sweatshirt, the sleeves coming down past her fingertips. The sweatshirt had a splotch of white paint across the front of it from when she helped Mom do the living room. It did the job, though, big enough to hide her chest. A pair of blue sweatpants completed the ensemble, baggy so they didn’t cling to her butt. Cousin booger didn’t need any eye candy to tempt him.
In the kitchen, Mom took a roaster from the oven, lugging the pan to the counter and setting it down. She slid off her oven mitts and licked her index finger.
“Damn mitts are wearing through,” she said. “That’s going to blister.”
“Want me to get you an ice pack?” Emma asked.
Mom took a good look at her, ignoring the burned finger for the moment.
“What?” Emma said.
“You know what.”
“My hair?”
“Emma.”
“Not enough makeup?”
“Emma!”
“The clothes,” Emma said.
“Change them.”
Emma made small circles on the floor with the toe of her slipper.
“But I’m comfortable,” she said.
“You know better to dress like that when we’re having company.”
“But—”
“Do you like looking like a boy? Because that’s how you’re dressed.”
“Like a what?” Emma said.
“A boy.”
“These clothes are fine, Mom.”
“Those boys are rubbing off on you. Go on and change, and put that turtleneck Aunt Sam bought you on.”
“It’s too girly,” she said.
“Exactly. Now march.”
“I have to tell you something.”
Mom pointed to the stairs and Emma desperately wanted to tell her the reason for not wanting to wear the turtleneck. It made her breasts look like overinflated water balloons, and would catch Jacob’s attention. She started toward the stairs and then stopped at the first step. It was building in her like steam in a boiler, but the words got stuck in her throat. Go ahead and say it. Jacob is a pervert.
“Are you going? They’ll be here soon. And put on that black skirt with the white tights.”
“Mom.”
“Go.”
She climbed the stairs and from behind her, Mom muttered, “I don’t know what gets into that girl.”
In her room she changed into the white turtleneck with roses and vines embroidered onto the neck. She slipped on the ribbed tights and the black corduroy skirt, the tights making her legs itch. Emma almost tore the clothes off before she hit the bottom step. The turtleneck felt two sizes too small, clinging to her chest like plastic wrap. Wearing the prison uniform meant sitting the whole night with her arms folded over her chest to cover it. Jacob had always taken little peeks at her, his gaze going to her chest or butt. After the incident last summer, she became even more aware of it, and it scared her.
In the living room, Jacob and Aunt Sam sat together on the couch. Aunt Sam had her legs crossed and sipped a glass of red wine. Her auburn hair was done up in a bun and pink rouge dotted her cheeks. She sat forward, chatting, leaned back, and uncrossed her legs. The wineglass went from left hand to right, then down on the table, then in her hand again.
Jacob was busy shoving cheese and crackers from a platter into his face. He wore the same clothes as always: blue oxford shirt, gray wool pants, and scuffed loafers. As usual, his hair shone and flecks of dandruff clung to the strands of his oily mop.
“Hello, Emma. Is that the outfit I got you?”
“It is.”
“Come here and let me see
you.”
Aunt Sam stood up and smacked a kiss on Emma’s cheek. “You are turning into a beautiful young woman. Doesn’t your cousin look nice, Jacob?”
The booger looked up from the plate and his gaze flashed across her chest, then back to the platter. “Yeah.”
He sandwiched a piece of yellow cheese between two crackers and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. Emma wrinkled her nose. Aunt Sam hit her with a barrage of questions. How was school? Did she have a boyfriend? Was she going to the dance at school?
Mom fluttered in and out of the room, restocking the cheese platter and refilling Aunt Sam’s glass from a bottle of merlot. Fifteen minutes to dinner, and Emma asked Mom about helping in the kitchen. Mom said no, and to Emma’s horror she suggested the unthinkable.
“Why don’t you show Jacob your room? You must have some tapes or albums he would be interested in.”
“I only like classical,” Jacob said, and Emma sighed in relief.
“I only have things like Bon Jovi and Motley Crue.”
“I like Motley Crue,” Jacob said.
“Why don’t you listen to some music for a little while before dinner?”
“I still don’t feel so hot, Mom.” The turtleneck felt like an iron shackle around her neck, and the tights itched. It felt as if little tsunamis crashed against the walls of her stomach, and the smell of onion from the kitchen made it worse.
“I’m sure you’d rather listen to music than hang out with us boring adults,” Mom said.
“We’re no fun. Go on Jacob,” Aunt Sam said.
“That might be fun,” Jacob said.
“Mom, I really don’t want to.”
“Don’t be rude to your cousin. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”
Jacob rose, cracker crumbs falling from the front of his shirt. More crumbs were stuck in the corners of his mouth, and for one horrible second Emma imagined those lips on hers. Pressed against hers, the stale cheese breath filling her mouth. Gross.
“All right, but I really don’t think you’ll like any of my music,” Emma said.
They entered the room and Jacob flopped on the bed, and the frame shook. “Why don’t you show me something?”
Cassie led Jack to the spiral staircase and upstairs to the long hallway. “That’s Ronnie’s room. Why don’t you join the other boys?”
