The Walls of the Castle

by Tom Piccirilli

  “I’m not going to give you any scrips without doing blood work first. But I am going to give you three shots of vitamin supplements. It’ll help when you come down off the tranqs. And I want you to come down off the tranqs.”

  “I hear you, doc.”

  “Do more than hear me. Listen to me.”

  “Right.”

  Burroughs had Kasteel drop his pants and Kasteel took the shot in the meaty part of his thigh, almost the same spot where he’d been stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush shank in Sing. In a minute he felt sharper, more present, and alert, everything he didn’t want to be.

  “Thanks,” Kasteel said. Then added, “Remember what I said about the girl and Ward Eight.”

  He hopped off the examining table and turned his back. He had to get strong again. He knew it. He had to start stealing more food from the cafeteria. He needed to put muscle back on. He needed to keep guys like Conrad and Watkins off his back. He needed to be able to carry twenty-year-old junkie girls over his shoulder.

  As he was leaving he passed a cubicle where the privacy drapes were slightly parted. A blonde-headed boy of about ten was sitting up on the table, kicking his heels against the metal side, bored and edgy and scared. The metal drumming, thump, thump, thump, a slow and steady beat. Kasteel’s pulse fell in sync with the pounding. The kid’s face was white with pain but expressionless except for a shadowed puzzlement in his eyes. The barest hint of a question furrowed his brow.

  He was shirtless, well-muscled for a child. His right arm had been pulled from the socket. The intern was having trouble popping it back in, but all of his jostling and pushing just made the boy sweat harder and grow paler. His chest was slathered. His forearm was swollen badly, probably fractured. No matter what they’d given him for the pain it wouldn’t be enough. Kasteel could hear bone scraping bone as the boy’s shoulder finally snapped back into place. The kid grunted and hissed through his teeth. He handled pain well.

  He had almost outgrown four or five faint burn scars on his belly and chest. They were perfectly round, about the size of a quarter. They were from a cigar.

  The kid’s mother stood beside him and ran her hand through his hair in a kind of nervous tic, the way Hedgwick did it. She looked like she might pass out. She looked like it was her arm that had been jerked so hard it had popped out. Her heavily painted face was in tatters. Her incessant silent tears had washed enough of her foundation away to show abrasions beneath. Without the make-up and the bruises and the cut lip and the swollen jaw she would be pretty.

  The kid stared into space. His eyes had narrowed. He was full of rage but it hadn’t begun to eat him alive yet. There was still time to save him.

  Burroughs would have caught it. Burroughs would’ve called the cops. Burroughs would have said something to them. The intern was new, fresh, unsure of what to do about anything that fell outside his direct job description. Maybe he didn’t notice. Maybe he was at the end of a twelve hour shift and just wanted to sleep.

  Kasteel walked out of the emergency room and through the front automatic doors. He scanned the front parking lot until he found a Coup de Ville with MD tags illegally parked in a handicapped space.

  He had his leather case of burglar’s tools inside the dead man’s jacket pocket and got the car door open with a slim jim in eight seconds. The alarm bleated once before he snipped the wires beneath the dash. Then he got comfortable behind the wheel, lit a cigarette, watched the ER doors, and waited in the darkness, starting to feel alive.

  A half hour later the woman and her son stepped outside and proceeded across the lot. The kid had a cast on his forearm and wore a sling. When they were out of expanse of the bright lights of the ER entrance she began to stagger and then started to sob. She slowly fell to her knees in front of the boy and pulled him to her gently. He placed the side of his face against hers but his eyes were still empty except for the hate. Kasteel lit another cigarette.

  They got into a five-year-old Chevy Malibu. The car had been in a lot of recent fender benders and scrapes, but no major accidents. The signs of road rage driving, nervous driving, too many with the fellas from work driving, rushing off in the middle of a rainy night driving.

  He followed close behind. There was no need to stay back four car lengths or keep to a different lane, the way he might’ve shadowed another heister to see if the guy was worth working with on the next job.

  He kept right on them as they moved through town. She drove slowly, with trepidation, and didn’t run any yellow lights. She drove like she was heading towards her own execution. The passenger seat was too high for Kasteel to see the boy, but he could imagine the kid sitting staunchly, that same anger building in him, the same question tearing at him. It would be there for the rest of his life, through years of therapy and liquor and all his shattered relationships. It would be there when he had his own son. It might destroy him or it might make him a better man in the end.

  When they came to a neighborhood in a new development, near a lake, near a park, near everything that helped to make you a happy family, she stopped dead in the middle of the road, gathering herself to continue on. Kasteel dimmed his lights and pulled over to the curb. He watched her as she thought about turning around and running. He knew what was going through her head. He knew what kinds of fantasies spun through your mind when you were faced with a moment of truth.

  She tugged the wheel a little too hard to the right and the Chevy angled awkwardly and blocked the road. She started to go into a three-point turn but she was so anxious it turned into a five-point, and then a seven-point, and then she backed up so fast she nearly ran into some garbage cans stacked on the sidewalk and almost took out the front quarter panel of the Coupe. The boy laid the side of his head against the window. His cast and sling were bright white in the darkness of the Chevy.

  She continued to turn, nine-point, twelve-point, until she’d completed a 360 degree turn and was again faced the same way she had been when she entered the street. She seemed to think there was no escape, and of course, there wasn’t. She tipped down again towards the boy. The kid leaned into her. Kasteel watched it all ahead of him, backlit by dashboard light. They were preparing themselves to meet the enemy.

  He didn’t blame her at all. He knew what it was like to be cornered, surrounded, to have nowhere to run. You couldn’t do anything except put your hands over your head and wait there for them to either kick the shit out of you or, rarely, to show just a touch of mercy.

  Finally she straightened out and coaxed the gas, headed home again. A spasm of anxiety must’ve worked down through her leg because the car jumped, slowed, and jumped again as if she couldn’t hold her foot firmly down on the pedal.

  Kasteel pulled away from the curb and began to follow again. He could imagine the husband telling his friends that his wife was a shit driver. Kasteel could see her smiling embarrassedly at barbecues and coffee klatches, assuming that she went out anymore. If he allowed her to have friends anymore. Kasteel could see him grinning at her, a world of agony hidden in his charm, pinching her chin, maybe giving her smooches, everybody else thinking, What a perfect couple, but she’s so quiet, so shy, and that kid, that kid always falling down, tripping, uncoordinated, hurting himself.

  The woman pulled in to a new house on a new street in the new development, only a few saplings in the yard, no mature landscaping but lots of flowers bordering the split-rail fence and in front of the small porch. The garage door opened and she pulled in, and she and the kid got out of the car and held each other there for a second in the dim garage lighting. Then the door came down again.

  Kasteel parked two houses down on the opposite side of the clean, wide street. All the houses were different but they all seemed the same. Their details appeared to be fluid. He saw them merging and flowing one into the next, like the corridors of the Castle.

  He climbed out and crossed the lawn and looked through the front window. The woman was standing in the living room staring flatly at her husband. He w
as smaller than Kasteel was expecting. Maybe that was part of it. Short guy syndrome, always had to be right, always had to be up in other people’s faces, stewing, stubborn, a resentful little fucker. In prison they were the cutters, the knifers, the stickers. They’d run up and stab someone in the hip two or three times and then run off again. You couldn’t just worry about the big bruisers, the bubbas and the giant Aryan skinheads you could see coming from halfway down the cellblock, you had to keep an eye out for those five foot nothing pricks with their hands cupped at their sides.

  There were fresh flowers on the kitchen table. He guessed there would be a new toy in the boy’s room, something the kid wouldn’t even be able to play with because of the broken arm. A new baseball glove, a football, a hockey stick. Something sports-related, probably because the father had always been puny, last chosen for a team at recess. The kid’s eyes were rolling with pain and shock. His body practically vibrated like a plucked violin string.

  The husband was talking. Kasteel could tell from the guy’s body language that the little prick was quickly overcoming his guilt and the anger was already reasserting itself. He touched the kid’s head and patted him like he was the family dog. He turned and pointed at the woman, emphasizing certain statements by poking the air. Eventually he would poke her in the guts and in the chest, and then he would pinch and shove and punch. Kasteel could see it as clearly as any score he’d ever planned in his life.

  The swinging metal gate at the side of the house slid open smoothly as he slipped past. Laid out on a tarp beside a charcoal barbecue were parts to the exhaust system of a ‘68 Chevy Nova. His old man used to leave scattered car parts around the yard like this. In the garage, on the patio, on the side of the house. His mother was always shouting for somebody to clean the place up. She’d find a half-finished carburetor in the laundry room.

  They’d rebuild the cars together and sell them to the racers who met down at the abandoned airport strip. Kasteel was twelve or thirteen, just starting to get into a little trouble, and he’d watch the dragsters flying down the ocean parkways hitting triple digits in 8.8 seconds. His father was always paid in fat wedges of cash. Later, when Kasteel was a driver, a wheelman, he’d be sitting outside of a bank and think of his father and the racers who bought his cars, and hear his mother yelling about the greasy handprints.

  He checked the back door. No alarm system, no deadbolt. He tried the knob. The door was loose in the frame but the lock held. He slipped out his tools and gave himself a countdown of twenty seconds to get through. It took fifteen. He stepped into the house and could feel the tension and bad blood history soaked into the walls.

  A pile of mail was on the kitchen table. They were mostly unpaid bills for a Bryce Clarke. Kasteel didn’t find anything with the woman’s name on it.

  He felt a flutter of sympathy for the short shit. Bill collectors, the IRS, the endless calls from the credit card agencies, the mortgage company, it could bend you, kill you from the inside, chase you out of your own head. It could make you do a lot of things. It couldn’t make you hit your wife. It couldn’t make you break the bones of your own boy.

  He chewed the name over. Bryce. It tasted sour in his mouth. It offended him.

  There was no beer in the fridge. Whatever Bryce’s action was it wasn’t too many 40s after work. Kasteel drank half a carton of juice then sat at the kitchen table and listened to Bryce Clarke murmuring apologies to his wife. The deep anger underlined all his words, the hate tinged everything he said. It was too much a part of him. It would be there no matter what he said or how he tried to say it. His inflection changed a bit every time he prodded the woman to stress significance.

  Kasteel craned his neck and caught a glimpse of her. She looked like a soldier readying herself for a suicide mission. She was too demoralized and detached to even respond to Bryce, which only fueled his further contempt.

  His voice rose. A plaintive whine worked through it, laced with a hint of hysteria. “What, don’t you believe me? I told you, it was the last time, Beth. I’ll never do it again. Christ, why can’t you believe me? Why can’t you show a little faith in me? John believes me. Don’t you, John?”

  The rage had quickly built up in him again. His ragged breathing filled the house. He couldn’t stay in the same spot any longer and started to stomp across the living room, his small feet making the bric-a-brac on the shelves shake. Pictures fell. Candles tipped out of their holders, rolled, and hit the floor. Kasteel heard a repetitive sound like the fine whisper of a hand brushing silk and knew instantly what it was. Bryce Clarke was now stroking his son’s head.

  “I’m going to give him a bath,” Beth Clarke said. “And put him to bed.”

  “I’m not finished yet.”

  “Finished with what?”

  “Speaking to my son.”

  “John’s tired. He’s in pain. He needs to rest and heal.”

  “He needs to listen. He needs to learn.”

  “You’ve taught him enough already.”

  More murmured apologies, this time spoken with a more exacting harshness, icy, slick. He was digging in, finding his comfort zone, the guilt leaving him, his conscience chipping off like shale. No one could hurt him, not even himself. The constant sweep of his hand moving through the boy’s hair underscored his buzzing chatter, a deep growl growing in his timbre. The kid kept silent.

  Soon there was the rasping sound of wet pecks made by someone who didn’t know how to kiss. Kasteel stood back in shadow and checked the living room. The boy hadn’t moved an inch, as immutable as stone while his old man held and kissed his cheek. He waited like Isaac for his father to slay him.

  Kasteel finished off the orange juice and set the empty carton aside. He found a vegetable medley platter in the fridge with dip and ate it silently while the pressure built within the house. A barometer would be going crazy now, as if a hurricane were about to engulf the place. Kasteel kept eating, feeling a little of the old strength coming back. He opened some bottled water, wet a kitchen towel, and washed his face. As he pressed the cold damp cloth to his eyes he flashed on Kathy tending to his wounds. Stitching up his cuts and burns and grazes, setting his broken fingers, giving him a sponge bath when he couldn’t get out of bed.

  Finally Bryce Clarke was through. He released the kid. Beth was grinding her back teeth together so hard that it sounded like an Apache sharpening a stone dagger. Bryce kissed the boy again, sloppy, skeevy, then gave him a swat on the ass. Kasteel wondered if something more than rage was happening here.

  “Goodnight, munchkin. I love you.”

  John didn’t seem to know which way to go. His mother took his hand and led him upstairs. She was still grinding her teeth. Kasteel imagined her molars worn down to nubs, the dentist lecturing her about wearing a night guard. A door shut heavily. A lock was engaged. A moment later, the rumbling groan of rushing water filled the home.

  Kasteel stepped out of the kitchen and faced Bryce Clarke.

  Up close he was a dashing little fucker. Kasteel could see why she’d fallen for him. Strong features with blunted edges, brash blue eyes, boy next door looks. Blonde locks falling perfectly across his forehead, tips of his bangs in his eyes so he could give a little wag of the head and they’d flip so cutely. A couple of old battle wounds, a tiny scar at one at the corner of his mouth, another angling from the corner of his eye. The kind of scars that made women purr. Not like Kasteel’s.

  He spoke quietly. “Hello, Bryce. Let’s talk.”

  Bryce Clarke reared away like a mad dog had snapped at him from the dark. The back of his knees hit the coffee table and he almost went over. He kept his balance and stood there wondering if he should put his hands up, if he should run, if he should cry out to his wife.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Someone who knows the truth about you.”

  Bryce frowned, flipped his curls. “What does that mean?”

  “You know what that means.”

  “Get out. You get out of my
house before I call the cops.”

  He went for his cell and drew it from his pocket. Kasteel snatched it from him. Kasteel wasn’t the same man he once was, but he still had fast hands.

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  Kasteel grinned at him. “I don’t like your voice.”

  He shifted his stance and squared his shoulders. He could feel his own eyes growing amused. The pain meds were wearing off but the vitamins and the juice and the veggie platter, all that healthy shit, oxygen, sugar, was rushing through his system. It was like he was back in the yard, aware of everything, afraid of everything and nothing, not wanting trouble but willing to kill if he had to.

  Bryce sneered. “You fucking her? Is that what this is?” he hissed. “You are, aren’t you. Or you want to, you stinking bastard. Is that her smell on you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “It is. I know it is.”

  Bryce charged and threw a wild left. Kasteel blocked it easily and chopped him lightly across the throat, sick of that voice, wondering how the woman could have stood it this long, how the boy hadn’t shot up a school or jumped off a cliff. A voice like that, hissing, seething, full of venom, could sear you like a face full of kerosene. Bryce was sent to his knees. He gagged and hacked and glared. His hate mutilated his features. He showed no fear. His eyes were clear. Bryce didn’t go in for an indulgence of prescription or recreational drugs. He took a six-count and then threw himself at Kasteel again.