by Thomas Pluck
Andre turned to glare disappointment.
Cold fingers clamped around Jay’s ankle. The Witch smiled with jack o’lantern teeth.
Thumbless hands with dirty fingernails boiled from the cracks in the rocks, crab-walking over Jay’s thighs, tickling up his ribs and belly to his throat.
Jay woke with a gasp, clutching his own neck with both hands. Wind whipped the rain against the bricks of the four-bunk jail cell. It smelled of sour vomit, sweaty feet, and cleaning fluid. Jay spat on the floor to get the taste of river water out of his mouth. It was the same Nutley jail cell he’d been locked in as a teen, modernized with a lidless steel toilet.
Jay sat and took inventory of himself. Prickly stitches formed a centipede across his forehead. The punctures in his leg had been cleaned and bandaged. His lower lip was puffed and swollen, and his ribs ached.
Beyond the gray bars, cops traded snaps of bravado, talking over a television show with a laugh track. Jay sat and stretched. His shoulders crunched like Bugs Bunny chomping a carrot.
“Can I get some water?”
He fell into a push-up position. Before he could snap out number one, the pain hunched him like a kicked dog and he fell to the floor clutching his side.
The rib was worse than he thought. He caught his breath and eased into position, performed three slow push-ups before he collapsed on the concrete, the impact knocking the wind from him.
Bobby Algieri’s shaved head peered through the bars. He looked like a fresh-scrubbed newborn stuffed in a blue uniform. Over his shoulder, Nicky Paladino bared a wrinkle-nosed grin that made Jay wonder if he’d been watching through the one-way mirror while Jay was strip-searched.
“You want water?” Nicky unzipped his pants, stretched his wrinkled sausage taut.
The hard patter hit the concrete. Jay rolled aside and hot spray misted his shoulders.
“You get thirsty, lick that up.” Algieri snickered. Nicky tucked himself away.
“Move,” a voice growled, and a barrel-chested man pushed through. Mayor Bello wore a gray tracksuit and unevenly worn loafers that exaggerated his bowlegged gait. His eyelids drooped red, face turned granite with stubble.
“You killed my son,” he said.
“He needed killing.”
Bello flared his nostrils with two deep breaths. “Let me have him,” he told Officer Algieri, without turning.
Algieri held a plastic pistol with a fat barrel. Jay clenched his eyes and curled into a ball while they hosed him with pepper spray. Fire ants rampaged over his eyelids, lips, and nostrils. Jay held his breath as long as he could, then gagged and spat as his nose flooded with mucus.
The cell door clanged open and Jay swung blindly. “I put that shit on my eggs in the morning!” he shouted, and ate a kick to the ribs. Slippery gloved hands gripped his wrists and cuffed them together. His eyes swelled shut, and all he could see was the red flare of the ceiling light.
Jay dry-heaved and a boot crushed him into the floor. He heard the crackle of a stun baton.
Bello traced the copper tines along Jay’s scalp to his hackles. “You took what was mine,” he said between panting breaths.
“Your boy—”
Jay writhed to the electric sizzle coursing through his spine. He had fought through a Taser once when the hacks came to drag him to solitary. He’d been in fighting shape. Now he flopped in the piss-puddle like a fish that had run out of fight.
“Mayor,” Algieri said, over Nicky’s muffled giggles. “You gotta go easy. Like, five seconds max.”
“Give that back to me, Bobby. You let him murder your best friend. My son. You pussy little faggot.”
“You’re wasting juice,” Algieri said. “I’ll do it.”
“Lemme do it,” Nicky said.
“Your Joey,” Jay groaned. “What did you do to him? How’d you teach him rape?”
“You shut your mouth!”
The shock seared behind Jay’s eyes as the electrodes burned two pinholes between his shoulder blades. Jay watched himself writhe from inside a television screen tuned to static.
“He learn that sick shit,” Jay panted, “from you?”
“Shock him again, Bobby.”
“Sir, he can’t take much more.”
“An eye for an eye, Bobby. If you’re too much of a woman to do it, I will. Walk out of here. No court is gonna convict me.”
Bello prodded Jay’s lips with the end of the stun gun. “Open your mouth, or I’ll shock you in the eyes.”
“Stick it up your ass,” Jay wheezed. “Like you did to Joey.”
The baton clubbed Jay’s temple and he lost time.
When Jay stirred, he saw only yellow slices through swollen lids. Felt rubber gloved hands dabbing at him with cool cloth. Leo argued with Bello in a hushed voice.
“You should let me handle this, Joseph.”
“Look at yourself, Leo. You can’t handle anything. You let him kill my boy and get away with it.”
“The law is the law. I’ve done more than I should already.”
“You’ll do what needs to be done,” Bello said. “Get him out of my sight. Forever. Or you know what happens. Everything you have you owe to me. Don’t forget it.”
Footsteps echoed from the hall.
“Does he need a hospital?” Leo asked.
“No concussion. He needs a week of bed rest,” a soft voice said. “I’ll give him a sedative and antibiotics.”
Jay felt a prick in his arm and sank through the jail bunk into a cool watery grave.
When they came for him, he was staring out the window of his cell at the banged-up shell of the Hammerhead sitting in the impound lot. He rolled off the bunk and landed on his feet. Three officers, none he recognized. They were wary but professional.
Jay held out his hands for the cuffs. The floors were newly polished old wood, the molding thick and shiny. They walked him to a small room at the end of the hall, sat him in a plastic chair and locked his cuffs to a ring on the table. The door slammed behind them.
The room table had a fresh coat of paint, but the same close smell he remembered from his last interrogation. A blank sheet of glass filled one wall. Jay waved to it, and waited in the dull silence until the door opened.
Leo Zelazko favored his left leg, moving stiffly to hide the pain. His uniform shirt crisp, pants creased. He wore a foam neck brace like a foreskin around his collar. The hollows beneath his eyes were shaded gray, the point of his nose rashed from the air bags.
He slapped his steel revolver on the metal tabletop. Pits of rust freckled the barrel and the cutouts in the cylinder.
“That was a good move,” Leo said. “Better than I expected from you.”
“Played a lot of chess inside.”
“I bet you feel at home with your king in jeopardy,” Leo said. “Because this game you’re playing, it’s slow-motion suicide. You’ve forced my hand. I have retrieved my property, but if you want to walk out of here, I need something else.”
Jay smirked. “A blow job?”
“Let’s not dance around it, Joshua. We searched your phone. It’s clean, but I subpoenaed Tony Giambotta’s phone records. He received a photo message that day.” Leo reached back and rapped on the door. “Send him in.”
The door cracked open. Officer Algieri guided Tony through the door. Tony hunched beneath the guiding hand on his shoulder, eyes darting.
“Sit, Anthony,” Leo said. He turned and looked at Officer Algieri until he left and closed the door silently behind him.
Tony sat and folded his hands on the desk. His work shirt was dark at the armpits.
“Your phone’s with our forensics geek,” Leo said. “But why don’t you tell me what you did with the photo Jay sent you.”
Tony blinked at his folded hands.
Leo sighed and took the revolver. Flipped open the cylinder to six empty chambers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer Zee.”
“Don’t tell him shit,” Jay said. “
You ain’t under arrest. He’s trying to scare you into giving him something.”
“This isn’t questioning, per se.” Leo took a .38 wadcutter from his belt and inserted it into the chamber.
“I don’t have it, Mister Zee. You gotta believe me.” Tony fluttered his eyelids.
“Anthony, you never could lie.” Leo turned the cylinder so the loaded chamber was one turn counterclockwise from the hammer, and snapped it shut.
“Quit jerking that gun off,” Jay said. “You ain’t shooting nobody.”
Leo cocked the hammer and trained the barrel on Jay’s chest. The thin line of his mouth curled at the corners.
“Tell him,” Tony said. “Tell him, pallie.” He wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead back into his hair.
A fist knocked on the door. Leo held the revolver under the table. “Yes?”
Officer Algieri opened the door, shuffling from foot to foot like a kid who had to pee.
“Well? Out with it.”
“The phone’s clean, sir. Chen says there’s no outgoing messages, and the card’s wiped.”
Leo stared until the door snapped closed.
“What did you do, Anthony?” Leo rested the revolver on the table. “I commend you on your discipline, turning all that lard to muscle. But you’re not too big to hang out the window.”
Tony looked away, his face flushing red.
“Leo,” Jay said. “You ought to wear that neck pillow all the time, so folks know what kind of dickhead they’re dealing with.”
Tony blinked at him.
“Relax, Tone. Leo’s a smart man. He’s gonna let you go, and release me on my own recognizance.” Jay leaned across the table and folded his hands. “How long you been holding me? See, I don’t understand this computer shit, but Tony does. And if I don’t go to the internet every couple days? That photo of you and the trucker goes all over the place.”
Leo furrowed his eyebrows, and studied Tony.
Tony wobbled his chin in quick little nods.
“It goes to some folks you know,” Jay said, “and some you don’t. Local teevee stations, newspaper men. The Essex County Sheriff. The national police chiefs’ association. Tony may be a scaredy-cat, but he’s also one shrewd son of a bitch.”
Leo stared into Jay’s eyes. “I’ve broken him before.”
“That’s the best part,” Jay said. He smiled, licked a newly chipped tooth. “Tony can’t stop it. Only I can. Think you can break me?”
Leo ran his thumb over the checkered steel of the gun’s hammer.
Jay met Leo’s stare with dead eyes. “Tell me I’m lying.”
Leo flared his nostrils with each breath. Tony squeezed his hands together as if arm-wrestling himself.
A snap like tiny animal bones broke the silence. Leo squeezed the trigger and eased the hammer down. He reached back and slapped the door three times.
Algieri appeared.
Leo gestured to Tony with the revolver. “Get this sweaty pig out of my sight.”
Tony gulped air and rushed toward the door.
“You did good, pallie,” Jay called. The door slammed behind him.
“You’re not threatening me with anything I haven’t faced off before,” Leo said. “Joseph said his dog chased someone off his property last night. Then we find you with a chunk missing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. If you’re set on killing him, none of your threats will force my hand.”
“You trying to cut a deal? Because we ain’t gonna be allies, not even for a minute.”
“What does it take to get rid of you?”
“Tell the truth about Joey,” Jay said.
“Never going to happen. Not while I’m alive, or Mayor Bello is.”
“That there’s the other thing that’ll send me on my way,” Jay said. “You two in your graves. Remember, you got until five p.m. to spring me or the photos fly.”
“I can’t let you walk,” Leo said, tapping the desk with the butt of the revolver. “There are appearances to be maintained.”
“Give me my phone call,” Jay said. “I may be ‘swamp trash,’ but I do have a lawyer.”
Leo drew in his cheeks as he thought on it. “Children have no idea what their parents do for them,” he said. “What we go through.”
“You hate what you are so much, you wouldn’t stand up to the man whose kid tortured your son.”
“Brendan was weak,” Leo said. “A beating now and then, that’s something you have to take if you’re going to walk this world and call yourself a man. If my boy had the strength to keep his nature secret, today Joey Bello would be a fat turd working for the water department, like the useless son of any other politician.”
“If you’d stood up for your boy—”
“Little Joey was a saint compared to his old man,” Leo said. “You were supposed to stick a number two pencil in Joey’s eye, but you got distracted by finger-banging that high-breasted Crane slut behind the pool clubhouse.”
Jay ran the cuff chain through the eyehook on the desk.
“Yes, I knew about that. Not much happens in this town I don’t.” Leo said. “Pussy makes you weak.”
“That why you prefer random trucker dick?”
“I’m no faggot,” Leo laughed. “Didn’t you read any history in prison? Spartan warriors only took wives to make children. They were iron men, who worshipped manhood. Their women had to dress and cut their hair like men to get their dicks hard. The bitches slept on the floor with the dogs.”
Jay arched an eyebrow. “So you’re a warrior, not some punk who can’t admit he loves the brown-eye? I got a sister with ten times the heart as you. Did her time pre-op. She told me all about self-hating guys like you.”
“I doubt that,” Leo said.
“First you go for suck jobs,” Jay said. “Then you pitch. Maybe give ’em a reach-around, and say it’s the heat of the moment. But soon you want a little taste, to see what it’s like.”
Leo blinked slowly.
“She said those guys sucked her cock better than anyone,” Jay said. “Their eyes rolled back while they choked on the damn thing. Called it ‘stick pussy.’ She had to be real careful not to call ’em gay though, or they’d beat her worse than any fag-bashing son of a bitch ever did. So tell me, Leo. That why you got a mouth like a chicken’s ass? From sucking stick pussy?”
“Oh, Joshua,” Leo said. “That is your birth name, by the way. Do you know the irony in hearing that come from you?”
“My folks called me Jay. That’s good enough for me.”
Leo laughed. “Those people aren’t your real parents.”
“They are to me.”
“You nicely evaded the question, but that’s fine for now. I’m tired of toying with you, and with your real father dead, his secrets are fair game. It took them a while to ID the body. What was left of it, anyway. They’re keeping Mr. Strick on ice until they notify Matthew. His other son.” Leo raised the gun. “You should’ve shot him with this, but I imagine you were saving it for Bello.”
“That’s a good story, from the man with the real reason to kill them.”
“It would have been a good play, if you’d managed to pull it off. But answer me, because I want to know. How does it feel to kill your own father?”
Jay’s eyes floated left. He dragged them back to center.
“So you knew,” Leo said. “It makes sense, knowing your history. You know your past, but you’re afraid to believe it. I could see the ache in your eyes ever since you were a boy. The things inflicted on you, no child should endure.”
“Like Brendan?”
“Brendan had it easy,” Leo snapped. “It’s not like his own father threatened to hang him with his belt. Or cut off his balls and toss them in the furnace.”
“That’s—”
“You want to know where you came from? Shut up and listen,” Leo said. “I’ve been holding this for thirty years, and I’m only telling it once.”
Jay clenched his teeth and released a
long sigh. He leaned back as far as the chain would allow.
“Your father was a charming prick, at least women seemed to think so. Strick the prick.” He smiled. “But he was weak. A gash hound. Your mother was a typist at an oil company. Seventeen, a real beauty. Not the bottle blonde bitch you call mother, her little sister.”
Jay frowned.
“Her name was Joyce Anne Calvin. Religious girl. Strick said the first time he put moves on her, she said she was saving herself for marriage. He took it as a challenge. And sure enough, once he stuck it in, that’s all she wanted. He sneak-fucked her every time he could, and eventually knocked her up. That was her lie to herself, that if he married her, it would wash her sins away. It’s all in her letters. He tried to buy her off, but her parents weren’t poor white trash like you. They expected him to do the right thing.
“Now, the right thing would’ve been to have it taken care of, but she was in love. Thought he’d change his mind once he saw his beautiful baby boy. When she found out he was already married, she went off the deep end. Ran away from home, got strung out on heroin by some animal. Her parents put her in rehab and got her older sister out of jail to raise you. The one you call Mother.”
Jay furrowed his brow in thought.
“She and her common-law husband Andre were small-time grifters, the black sheep of the family. They raised you until you were five years old, when your mother supposedly found Jesus again and got clean. But your aunt and uncle, they didn’t want to give you back. So your grandparents had them locked up, and handed you back to your mother. You remember any of this?”
Jay licked his dry lips. The memory of the Witch stealing him from Mama’s Jeep faded into storybook colors.
“She didn’t stay clean for long. Threatened to come knocking on Strick’s door, so he had his lawyer cut her a check. When the money ran out, she started selling her pussy. And when no one wanted to fuck a used-up junkie whore, she started selling you.”
Leo bored his golden eyes into Jay’s. “We both know what happened next. You killed her, like you killed your father.”
Jay swallowed dry.
“The report says she fell asleep smoking and burned in her trailer. But I spoke to the coroner,” Leo said. “She suffered over a hundred stab wounds, all in the face. Her eyes were gouged out. Not that she didn’t deserve it.”