by Thomas Pluck
Jay studied the scar lines across his knuckles.
“Your aunt and uncle, the people you call your parents, they found you. And they smelled money. They came here to put the squeeze on Strick, and he asked me for help. So I put out feelers, greased a few wheels, and figured out your story.”
Jay parted his lips, and Leo cut him off.
“I hoped you’d beat Joey so badly he’d never bother my son again, but the demented little shit knew better than to hurt you.”
The struggle to comprehend his past played across Jay’s face. Pinballs with human faces careened off each other inside his head.
“It’s a pity you and Matthew hate each other. If you worked together, you could have driven us all to suicide long ago. Like poor Stanley.” Leo crinkled his eyes at the edges. “What bullshit. My guess is, you stuck the gun in his eye. You have a thing for eyes. Because they see what you did as a little boy, as your mother’s whore.”
Jay rested his eyes on the revolver. Willed it to go off and blast his brains out.
“Tell me, Joshua. When you’re done with us, will you hunt down all the creatures who fucked you? I hope you will,” Leo said, and holstered the weapon. “I have leads. They’re a quarter century old, but they may help.”
The scratches in the scarred tabletop swirled beneath Jay’s eyes.
Leo stood and smoothed his slacks. “I’ll trade them, and your birth certificate, on your word that the photo is destroyed. And if you break your word, Tony will pay for it. Forever.”
The door slammed and Jay’s head hit the table like a sixteen-pound sledge.
Chapter 37
After the riot cooled out, the prison stayed on lockdown for months.
Verdad took over the prison hooch operation and paid back the Heimdall Brotherhood for what they’d done to his woman. Okie’s crew would be well rewarded for their part in firing the riot to cover it all. Jay would get protection against the Brotherhood, and Cheetah got access to a Latin King lawyer who could get his sentence cut. Mack’s wife was given a job at the Wayne DMV. And once lockdown was over, Okie had been promised a visit from a busty female in a private cell. The guards who’d won big on the fixed fight would take care of it.
“All us outlaws are titty babies, missing our mama’s milk. Just wanna feel a pair of warm titties again,” Okie said, one cell over. “That or some of them meat pies they make in Louisiana. Could go for a whole sack of those.”
Jay concurred. As a kid, they knew a gal from Natchitoches who made those crunchy pockets of delight by the batch. “You like tits so much, how come I’m celling with Peaches instead of you?”
“Aw hell, kid,” Okie laughed. “The only time that one don’t talk is when she’s got a ramrod in her mouth, and mine’s dead as Dillinger.”
“I’m right here,” Rene said, filing her nails with auto shop sandpaper. “Viejo chingón.”
“I can’t figure you out, Oke.” Jay laughed. “You teach me to be careful, and you raise nine kinds of hell every chance you get.”
“I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle, a regular Natchitoches meat pie of mystery,” Okie said. “Don’t worry about what goes on in my head, the shrinks been trying to figure me out since before you were born.”
They slapped hands through the bars and dreamed of their spoils like kings on Shit Mountain.
In the middle of the night, the hacks came in full riot gear. They charged Okie’s cell with batons and pepper spray. Jay swore through the bars as they dragged Okie away. They came back and gave Jay the same.
The hacks dragged him past the infirmary by ankle chains and threw him on the slick green tiles of the morgue. Two stainless steel tables stood bolted to the floor, a drain on the floor between them. Cheetah sat cuffed to a table leg, hunched and shivering. The hacks locked Jay’s ankle chain to the other table.
Cheetah’s face glowed with sweat. Eyes red from the pepper spray. Cheeks swollen from blows. “We go down fighting,” he whispered. The hardness settled behind his eyes.
Jay pushed his fear down deep, to stoke the hate-fires.
The doors slammed open and the hacks tossed Okie to the floor like a blood-streaked scarecrow. He pushed himself up with smashed fingers. Groaned through a bloody mouthful of jagged teeth. Eyes swollen to slits, cheeks ragged, showing bone.
Jay howled and leaped for him. The chain jerked him back like a dog on a short lead.
The four hacks parted to let Warden Jeffers through, red-faced to the top of his bald spot. Sweat dripped from his mustache, and blood from the knuckle dusters on his hands.
Okie rolled to his knees and held out his busted fists in defiance.
The crack of metal on Okie’s cheekbone hit Jay like a bullwhip. The warden beat Okie’s face until he splayed on the floor, the stomped toes of his bare feet twitching with every wallop.
“This is what happens,” the Warden wheezed, spat. “This is what happens, when you get one of my men hurt. You tell every piece of shit, they shank a guard, we’ll arrest their women in the parking lot, throw her in holding with a fucking nigger rapist with AIDS. You hear me?”
Okie pushed himself to one knee with one wobbly arm. An eye lolled out on his torn cheek, his face a ruined mass of tongue, teeth and bone. Hot tears burned Jay’s cheeks. The shackles cut into his ankles as he crawled toward his mentor, palms squeaking against the tiles.
Okie dragged himself toward the warden on his elbows, pulling his dead legs behind. He lifted one middle finger, shaking with the effort. Gurgled two unmistakable syllables.
The clubs rained down. A big hack fell on him with two-handed swings, mashing him into the tiles. Breath fogged their riot masks before they quit.
The last Jay saw of his prison-father was the smear of blood on the tiles as they hauled the mess of Leroy “Okie” Kincaid’s body to the meat locker. He spent five years in solitary until warden Jeffers retired. Cheetah’s lawyer cycled him out as promised, and Rene soon after. Verdad sneaked him books to keep him sane. Jay still wondered if they had worked or not.
Weariness dragged down Martins’ thick jaw. The sickly light gave his skin green patina, like a bronze statue of an Israeli general. “Thought you said you planned on living well.”
“What, this ain’t farting through silk?”
Martins told him he’d been charged with property damage and reckless driving, but would be released on his own recognizance.
“Don’t know when I can pay you,” Jay said. “But I will.”
“It’s been taken care of.”
“By?”
“You know.” He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially.
“Give her my thanks.”
The Challenger glared at him from the impound lot with busted headlights. The front fenders were bent into a sneer. A giant snowflake where Jay’s head hit the windshield. River stink wafted from the front tires, and an earthy rankness rode the breeze beneath it.
He opened the door and found a fresh link of human turd on the seat.
Bobby Algieri grinned from across the lot.
Jay limped to the trunk. The lock had been drilled out, his toolbox rifled. He found a scrap of plastic trash bag and picked the mess off the seat.
He turned the key and the engine kicked to life. The fan clattered against the housing. He killed it, tried to yank the hood open, but it wouldn’t budge. He called Tony’s shop for a tow, called Herschel for a ride. The call to Hersch went to voice mail. He was about to start walking when the Blue Aston Martin rolled to the gates. Ramona at the wheel, her blouse cut low. Jay heard Algieri gasp from across the impound lot.
“Matt would like his Gallardo back,” Ramona sad. “I wish you’d come to me before embarking on your vendetta.”
“I want my father back,” Jay said. “That’s not happening either.” He told her about Matt’s videos, and what he’d said about her using him.
“That slimy shit. I’ll turn the security system off when I get home,” she said, and swerved down a mountain road. “You n
eed a hot shower, real bad.”
“I got nowhere to sleep, I could use a bed is all.”
“Matt’s been staying in our apartment in the city,” she said. “And if he’s spying on me again, he can stay there awhile.”
“Is he worth it?”
Ramona sighed. “What do you think, your magic cock’s going to make me divorce my husband? I love him, Jay.”
Jay flinched and stared into the trees flying by the window.
She eased to a stop at the entrance to their private drive. “Look at me, Bluejay.”
Jay locked eyes with her.
“I loved you, too.” Her eyes were hidden behind her shades. “I still do, but…not that way. We had our time, and it’s not going to happen. Not like we wanted.”
“That bird’s flown, huh?”
“Shut up a minute,” she said, and rested her head on the steering wheel. “Don’t act like you conquered me. That makes it a pity fuck. Do you think I’d do that to you?”
“No.”
“We have something. There’s a bond there, one there aren’t words for. Sometimes it feels like love, but that’s not what it is. It’s not love, and if you try to make it into something it’s not, it’ll be over.”
He rested his swollen cheekbone against her shoulder.
She washed him with care in the master bathroom, a mausoleum of black marble veined with white and roiling with steam. He rose despite the aches in every joint and bone. She pressed her rump into his lap and he soaped her from thighs to breasts, weighing them in his hands, thumbing the broad pink circles to a deep red.
She shivered and craned her neck to bite his ear as his head lolled on her shoulder. The slick heat of her sex and the warmth of her silken skin felt plastic and distant, like someone else’s dream. She drummed his lap with urgent bounces until he hunched in reflexive release.
She toweled him dry and led him to a guest room where another of Andre’s dark hardwood beds was stowed, ornate with hand-tooled detail. Everyone had his father’s work except him.
Jay collapsed into the sheets. She cradled his head to her chest, but sleep had already taken him.
A chill wind cut over the trestle and pimpled Ramona’s perfect skin with gooseflesh. Jay knelt in mute supplication, breathing her scent in deep. It fuzzed through his brain like a drug. She gripped his hair, guiding him until she threw her head back, her mouth a silent rictus of pleasure.
Jay stared with empty eyes.
Ramona knelt and plunged her hand into his jeans. “This is mine.”
A silent nod as she clutched him to her chest, working until he shuddered and buried his face between her breasts. The darkness and warmth smothered the insane crash of the world, her heartbeat the pounding surf of the primordial womb, and he fell asleep.
A muted thrum rocked the boy awake to the stink of sulfur.
Watch me, the Witch rasped. It’s just like a kiss.
A big hand with grease embedded in the knuckles gripped the Witch by the hair, pushing her face against the boy.
A jolt down the boy’s spine. His gumbo scars flared red.
Mmm. Don’t it feel good? Now you try.
The boy ran for the door, but they dragged him back. Three cigarette burns later, he did what they taught him to do.
Jay woke with a roar and strained at the silk ties knotting his wrists and ankles to the bedposts of the guest room. The scars burned like fresh embers on his belly.
“It’s all right Bluejay, it’s all right,” Ramona cooed, and took him back in her mouth.
The bed beams creaked with his struggles. “Don’t,” he groaned.
“I need this,” she said, cooling his flesh with an exhale. “And so do you. Let me do this for you. The woman who hurt you is gone. Look in my eyes. Look, Bluejay. There’s power in this.” Her nails raked his chest, cobalt blues boring through his storm-steel eyes as she took what she wanted.
“Please,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Stop.”
She paused. “Most men enjoy this because they think they’re in the position of power, but they’re not. Let go, Bluejay. Give me control. I’ll drive her away forever. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
The bonds swelled Jay’s fists purple, as her soothing murmurs reverberated through his flesh. Her pursed lips cracked and her face drew thin, needle marks pocked their way down her pale arms, and her eyes burst forth with writhing maggots.
Jay bowed his spine and bunched every muscle. The left bedpost bent with a crack.
Ramona rose with a gasp. “I’m trying to help you!”
The post splintered at the base. The boy swung it like a cudgel.
Ramona yelped and kicked herself off the bed.
“She was my mother!” Jay clawed at the striped silk tie knotted around his other wrist. He roared and clubbed the second bedpost until it snapped. “I stabbed her face into chopmeat.”
Ramona grabbed a robe and ran for the door as he pounded the bed to flinders.
“Now you know,” Jay shouted. “That what you wanted?”
He gathered his filthy clothes and stalked naked down the hallway.
Erin cut him off at the kitchen, waving the tip of a Damascus chef knife. “You get on, now.”
“What I should’ve done in the first place,” Jay said, and pulled his shirt over his head as he walked. He turned at the door. “This place is an asylum.”
“She thought she could heal you. I tried to warn her,” Erin said, with a jab of the knife. “She wanted closure.”
Jay slammed the door and gave it to her.
Chapter 38
Tony had been angry but seemed satisfied when Jay said how Ramona left him feeling like a gutted fish. “Told you she was fucked up,” the big man said, and went back to banging on the Challenger.
Jay sipped Tony’s shitty coffee from a Styrofoam cup and flipped through the day’s newspaper.
Governor offends teachers with remark. Congress deadlocked over spending. Nude motorcyclist identified as former real estate magnate.
He read that one. Police hadn’t ruled out foul play, but the odd circumstances of Strick’s death were attributed to his blood alcohol level and his crumbled business empire. His family could not be reached for comment.
Either the cops missed the bullet or were keeping it to themselves.
Jay thought on what Matt had said about his father—their father—and thirteen-year-old Ramona. No wonder Matt hated Jay and his father in his bones.
There’d been times Jay had prayed for a brother. Unanswered whispers in the dark, to a deaf-and-blind Lord who’d abandoned him to the Witch and all her minions. He’d had one, all this time. One who’d preferred to let him rot in prison than admit they shared blood. Who had lied under oath to put him there.
Was there a plan to kill Joey Bello?
No, sir. Jay said “that boy needs killing.” He said it all the time. We stopped taking him seriously. My father said that’s just how those people talk.
Jay called him a liar and the bailiffs dragged him out of the courtroom.
The obituary listed one viewing for Matthew Henry Strick, Sr. Jay tore it out of the paper and tucked it into his pocket. The hole it made revealed another headline.
Newark Cabbie Robbed and Murdered.
Unidentified black male, age thirty to thirty-five. Shot twice in the back of the head at close range. Found in his black and white taxi on a service road by the airport. Detective Billy Zelazko said he’d been executed with a .38 caliber weapon loaded with hollow points.
Jay thumbed at his phone. Herschel’s number rang and rang. He was about to click off when a voice answered, “Hello?”
“Hersch?”
A woman’s voice. “Who is this?”
“Jay. I just—”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling.”
“Listen, ma’am, I’m—”
“You’ve hurt us enough, you crazy white motherfucker. Don’t call here again.”
He tried again, but it we
nt straight to voice mail. Jay sank in the chair and contemplated the depths of Leo’s self-hatred. Would he kill an innocent man to keep his secret?
If Jay had gotten Herschel killed, he thought he might hate himself as much.
At the funeral home, a line queued out the door for the fallen patriarch of the Strick family. Former business partners, homeowners. Women freckled with sunspots and lined with smoker’s wrinkles. Their expressions telling whether they came to pay their respects or to confirm the man’s demise.
Jay collected dirty glances as he skipped the line. He brushed past the chunky usher at the door. “I’m family.”
A crowd filled the viewing room. Curt nods, eyebrows perked in sympathy as friends caught up and smiled in the corners. The furrowed brows of those eager to curry favor with Strick the younger. The chatter faded into hushed whispers when Jay walked down the center aisle toward the stately casket.
The family sat in front on burgundy armchairs. Ramona’s mother a prim and plastic statue, her dad a silver-haired smiler. Ramona on Matthew’s left, his mother on his right. Their daughter, Saoirse, a deer in the headlights. The wood of the armchair creaked beneath Matthew’s clenched fists.
Jay knelt before the closed oak box, his face distorted in the gleaming lacquer. He placed a hand on the cold brass furniture. Confusion twisted in his brain like a headless rattlesnake. Hate for the man who’d abandoned him, and raw sorrow for closing the door to a past he never knew existed. He folded his hands, closed his eyes, and thought of what to say to a God who had never listened to his pleas and prayers.
I live in spite of the cold son of a bitch, Okie had laughed. Jay had never given God much thought. The Witch said He was always watching, planting an image in his young brain of God as the giant atop the beanstalk, fathomless in both size and enormity, a complicit observer in the world’s pain.