The Big Bad

by Phil Beloin Jr.

  "You heard me."

  "I heard you, I just don’t want to believe it. Are you sure, son?"

  "Damn sure."

  "Hey, listen when can I score me some more..."

  But Irv had hung up.

  29

  Pam used a baby wipe she had in the glove box to clean me and then herself up. I got some smokes and beers out, and we handled those, sitting naked in the convertible. The sun beat down on our bodies, hot and relentless, yet, I felt completely at ease—something I wasn’t used to unless I was drinking too much. Was it love? Or just great sex?

  It’s both, Nick.

  "Hey, Nickie, I want to ask you something," Pam said. She was fully reclined in the seat now, the beer light can resting and sweating on her bully button, the cig perched in the corner of her mouth.

  I turned, soaking in her body like the sun’s rays. "Anything at all, baby."

  "What’s on that tape Irv’s blackmailing you with?"

  "Forget it," I said.

  "We got fifteen minutes or so, don’t we?"

  "Huh?"

  "Before another wham-bam-thank-you-Pam."

  "I figured on taking a nap."

  "And burn that marvelous penis of yours?"

  I closed my eyes. "I’m sleeping now, baby."

  "Come on, I want to know."

  "Why did Irv want you back by Friday?"

  "That’s simple," she said.

  "Then tell me."

  "Irv and I’s nuptials."

  The cigarette fell from my mouth, nearly burning my thigh. "Huh?"

  "It seemed the only way to hold him off from forcing himself on me."

  "And you’re going through with it?"

  "My feelings are confused right now.”

  "Irv sees that album you showed me and you’re shredded cheese."

  "Nice analogy."

  "It’s apt."

  "I didn’t say it wasn’t."

  "My advice is to get away from him."

  "You sound like Teddy," she said.

  "Well, he’s right on this one."

  "Wow, you and Teddy are in agreement." She ground out her cigarette in the car’s ashtray. "The more I think about it," she said, "the more I suspect I’ll be nothing more than Irv’s sex slave if I marry him. I love my freedom, Nick, loving doing whatever I please, when I please."

  "Then forget about Irv," I said.

  "That’s what I’m doing here with you," she said.

  "That’s sweet, baby."

  "So enough about me. Your turn again. The tape. Blackmail."

  "Yeah, okay, what the hell," I said.

  I finished my beer and cracked opened another one. I decided not to mention certain details, like their names and relationship with Eddie.

  "Couple nights ago," I said, "these two girls pick me up in my own bar."

  "You’re a bar owner?"

  "Yeah. It’s called Nick’s Place."

  "The surprises never stop with you, Nick."

  "You going to keep cutting in or what?"

  "I’ll let you know," she said. "Please continue."

  "I invited them up to my apartment, which is above the bar."

  "This have something to do with the necrophilia?"

  "What’s that?"

  "Your hard-on for fucking corpses."

  "Putting it that way makes it sound so trite."

  "Sorry."

  "Where was I?"

  "Girls, bar, heavy drinking, up to your place."

  And then it hit me, all the dream fragments colliding into one cohesive memory. It might have been my ease around Pam, or what we had just done that triggered the rest of that evening.

  Mona and Lisa were heading up the stairs to my apartment, me following behind pinching their tight little butts, them giggling drunk on just a couple of gin drinks, telling me to stop it, wait until we got inside. I was swaying, my legs as strong and steady as toothpicks, banging against the walls of the staircase. My head wanted to spin off and fly to the moon.

  The girls paraded around the living room, checking out my expensive furniture, Lisa dropping herself down on the sofa like she was in some kind of cheap hotel.

  "I’m getting beers," I said.

  "One for me," Mona said, as she looked out the window, the city noisy and over lit at that hour.

  "Make it two," Lisa said.

  I grabbed three long necks from a case John had carried up from the truck that delivered to the bar. Lisa scooted over and Mona sat on my other side. I gave out the beers.

  I swallowed hard then said, "You girls ain’t redheads who dye their hair blond, are ya?"

  That got a double laugh. "Hell no, Nick," Lisa said.

  "Oh natural," Mona said.

  "And you’re gonna find out for sure," Lisa added.

  "Redheads," I said, "are all bad."

  "Why’s that?" one of them asked.

  "Forget it."

  Lisa took a hit of her beer. "How you going to find our guy?"

  "Right," Mona said. "What actions are you going to employ?"

  "Stake out his home, his place of business, then bash the crap out of him till he pays." It sounded pretty good—like I even meant it.

  "That’s the style, Nick," Lisa said.

  Mona got off the sofa. "And now for your remuneration."

  "What did you just say?" I said.

  "You wanna see me strip or not?" she replied.

  "If that’s what remuneration means, go for it," I said.

  Mona went down the hall while I polished off my beer. I took Mona’s from the floor and nipped at that one.

  "You ready in there?" Mona called.

  "Ready, Freddie," Lisa called back.

  Mona sashayed into the living room, nude except for the halter top she held over her chest. She moved around in a wide circle, keeping those fine legs tight together, showing that golden nozzle above her prize.

  Lisa said, "Her halter-top is not only off the rack, it is off the rack.”

  "Shut-up, girlfriend," her roomie said. "Hey, Nick, I wanna be a supermodel."

  "Yea...great," I said.

  "I’m taking classes at the community college," Mona said.

  And with that, her top slipped to the floor, and she came towards me.

  Pam had sat up and was leaning into my shoulder. "Then what happened?" she said.

  "We went into the bedroom," I said.

  The three of us were naked on the bed, Mona trying to bring me to life. I was unsteady, my stomach belching my American lager. I had trouble keeping my eyes open. I had my hand on Lisa’s tattoo, tracing it with my finger towards her inner thigh.

  "This is what I want," I blurted. "I’m on…top of…honey," I said to Lisa, "while you…hey stop… it down there… and listen…"

  Lisa took me by the shoulders and laid me down. "We’ll do it in the morning, Nick," she said, "when you’re sober. I promise."

  My eyelids were as heavy as stones. I couldn’t stop them from closing. "And…you…sticks your finger…in my…"

  "He’s passing out," one of them said.

  "Let’s do that blow now," was the last thing I heard.

  "And when I woke up, they were dead," I said to Pam.

  "How’d they die, Nick?" she said.

  "They thought they were snorting cocaine, but it was pure heroin. Irv gave it to them."

  Pam leaned away. "Holy shit," she said.

  "You thought you knew all about Irv. But you don’t. He murdered those two girls and videotaped them in my apartment so I’d have to find you."

  "The one with the tattoo, what was her name?"

  "What does it matter? She’s as dead as you get. And your fiancé did it."

  She grabbed me by the arm, squeezing hard. "Her name, god damn it, Nick?"

  I unclasped her grip. "Take it slow, Pam."

  "Who was it?"

  "She said her name was Lisa. Lisa Atkins."

  "And her tattoo was a rose with a stem dangling around her leg?"

  "Yeah .
..wait ..."

  She didn’t wait, plying me with another question. "What did the other one call herself?"

  "I forget her last name, but her first was Mona."

  "Both blonds, you said?"

  "Did you know them?"

  "Oh, my fucking God," she said.

  It was my turn to grab her. "Answer me."

  "They did some pictures for Eddie. Lesbian photos."

  “They told me Eddie owed them five large for moving his coke.”

  "It wasn’t for that,” Pam said.

  "What then?" I said.

  "They were trying to blackmail, Eddie," she said.

  "No shit.”

  "Lisa, the one with the rose on her leg, wasn’t eighteen when the shoot was done."

  I remembered finding Lisa’s driver’s license in my apartment. Her birthday had only been a few days prior.

  "She was threatening to go to the police," Pam said, "if Eddie didn’t pay up. He didn’t have the money."

  "So what did he do?"

  "The night before he came up here, he set up a meeting with the girls at the office."

  I remembered that being on the girls’ answering machine.

  "He wasn’t there, though,” she said. “Left the door unlocked. He knew Mona and Lisa would go inside." Pam paused, looked away at the trees. "Eddie asked me to steal a bag of heroin from Irv, saying it was a way to hold the girls off for a while. Sorta’ like it was a partial payment. He told me they shot up all the time, and how would I know they wouldn’t?"

  "And Eddie left it for the girls to find?"

  "Yeah, right on the desk in the waiting room there."

  "Fuck me," I said.

  Irv hadn’t killed Mona and Lisa. It was Eddie.

  "I’m sorry, Nick," Pam said. "I can’t believe Eddie would do something like that."

  "Get dressed," I said, pulling up my pants which were still around my ankles. My knees banged into the steering wheel. I got my .45 back in the waistband.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Forget it."

  30

  I swung the car around in a wide circle—its turning radius sucked—matting down the tall grass and ferns. Pam was still sliding into her top and my driving was sloshing her around.

  "Jesus, take it easy, Nick," she said.

  I ignored the comment, jamming it into second gear, and plowing through the row of hemlocks, entering the woods again. Branches raked over us and we got tossed about some more. I didn’t have my seatbelt on and nearly lost the grip on the wheel. Pam was holding onto the roll bar with both hands. I gave that puny four cylinder some more gas, the tack screaming high towards the red zone.

  "Slow down!" Pam said. "You’ll blow the engine in low like this!"

  Yeah, I forgot we were in four-wheel low—you couldn’t punch the thing—and something did blow right then, but it wasn’t the engine. Turned out to be the left front tire. I lost control when I touched the brakes and we skidded—the brakes wouldn’t fucking respond fast enough—Pam screaming something right before we slammed into a good size rock jutting from a group of boulders. Her legs hit the dash, my chest set off the horn.

  "You okay?" I said to her.

  "I don’t know," she said.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Don’t you ever listen?"

  "Your mouth’s okay for sure."

  I got out, saw the flat, told her about it.

  "There’s a damn spare in the barn," she said.

  "I’ll go get it."

  She stuck her leg out, flexing it back and forth. "My knee hurts," she said.

  The skin around it glowed a deep red. "Can you walk?" I said.

  "I don’t know."

  "Try."

  I came around, helped her out. She took a tentative step and buckled into my arms.

  "Shit," she said.

  "Sit back down."

  She hopped into the seat. "Go get the tire, Mario. I’ll wait and you can drive me up."

  "You got the lug and jack in the car?"

  "Yeah, under the passenger seat."

  "Sit tight. I’ll be back."

  I started along the trail.

  "Hey, Nick?" she called.

  Turning back to her, I said, "Yeah, what?"

  "Please don’t hurt him."

  "I won’t, baby," I said.

  But I didn’t mean it.

  You walk alone in the woods and the thing you hear the most is the birds. All different cadences piercing your thoughts. I hated them fuckers. I hated myself most of all. I had been used from the get-go. The entire fucking mess had twisted and turned beyond my control. But a bill had to be paid. That’s all there was too it. Would the sun come up tomorrow and everything be peachy? I doubted it and didn’t care.

  Following the path, I reached the road and headed up, the bugs attacking my limbs and head, but I paid them no attention. I took short, steady steps. I was an avalanche ready to break free from the mountainside and nothing could stop me once I got rolling.

  Then I stopped dead in my tracks. I thought I heard a motor coming from in front of me. Distant, but rough—not a car’s, more like a boat’s. Could the sound have traveled up from the lake and fooled me? No, I would have heard the boats before this. There it was again; coughing one more time before the birds overtook the ambiance.

  I got the twinge then, my instincts hollering that something wasn’t right at the cabin. I got out my gun and clicked the safety off. I increased my pace to a slow jog. I couldn’t move much faster. I knew I was out of shape, pissing the days, the years, away in the bar. I burned through a pack a day of smokes and I couldn’t tell you the last time I hit the weights or went for a run. The indolence kicked in full speed, sweat flooding from my pours as all my muscles strained to pull me up the hill. My heart didn’t want to pump any more blood and my lungs fought the air I was gulping in, but I kept on pushing it.

  Getting near the top, I gave myself a moment to recover. I needed more than that, but I didn’t think I had that much time to give. I moved again, slower now, in a bit of a crouch. Not far from the log gate, just off the road, the sun gleamed off something that hadn’t been there before. I would have noticed that, too, today or yesterday or anytime I went past. I approached with the .45 ready, a shaky finger on the trigger.

  The gleaming got brighter as I neared. What the hell was it? The shine broke off into two distinct parts, each hanging in the woods like ornaments. Was I seeing things? Were the D.T.’s real this time?

  Nope. Not yet anyway. I changed my angle of approach and the brightness shot off in another direction. What I saw were handlebars. Belonging to a motorcycle. A recent model, the blue paint and chrome still looking fresh. Irv had a couple of bikes locked up in his garage in Nova. Was this one of them? All I knew was the sound I had heard had come from its muffler.

  I went up further, so I could see the open land on top of the hill. Everything looked normal; the cabin quiet, the dogs silent in the barn, no sign of Eddie or the kid.

  And whoever was on the bike.

  I waited. It could have been as long as a minute before something happened. A crow took flight from a blue spruce growing midway in the front yard. The branches of the bush shook. A bird couldn’t cause that much movement. But the freakish looking guy sneaking between the Christmas trees could. He hadn’t bothered shaving in a week or so, had dark hair down to his butt crack, faded leather boots tucked into his jeans, and a leather jacket covered his top half. The pistols in each gloved hand looked like semi-automatics. Even at that distance, I knew I had seen him before, though I couldn’t place it.

  One thing was for sure; he wasn’t a friendly neighbor looking to borrow a cup of sugar. I raised the .45, but he darted behind another spruce before I could get a bead on him. Where the hell had I seen that dude before?

  I glimpsed him on the sneak again, slow dancing his way towards the cabin. I had a better look at his unshaven face and the hollow eye sockets. I remembered him now. He did contract work for Ir
v. He called himself Tom Boy and rumors had it, he worked with Big Mama, a woman I had never seen before.

  Tom Boy was getting closer to the deck’s stairs. He was hiding himself good, never leaving his front or rear exposed for very long. A real pro. But was he alone or was Big Mama with him? I checked behind me, thinking as I turned my neck that it would have been too late for me if she was there.

  The front door to the cabin opened and Teddy came onto the deck, his long thin body looking like a white stick from the distance. Teddy thrust out his chest and stretched his gangly arms as if he had just awoken from a nap. Tom Boy was unseen, hunkered down by the last group of shrubbery not more than a few feet from the pilings holding up the deck. Tom Boy must have heard the door open—I thought I had from the woods. Teddy strolled to the railing and leaned over it, giving Tom Boy a perfect target.

  I stepped from my cover. "Teddy!" I said. "Get back in the cabin!"

  Teddy glared at me, my warning not climbing the hill very well, and him still pissed about last night’s beating. The shrubs rustled—I heard a pop—and wood splintered around Teddy. He didn’t know what had happened. He just stood there, frozen.

  "Get inside!" I said, running up the driveway, waving my arms like I was directing a 747 to a landing. "You’re getting shot at!"

  Teddy got the message this time, scampering back into the cabin, Tom Boy shooting holes in the floor of the deck, but missing his mark. The cabin door slammed closed, which triggered off the Rottweiler, howl after howl emanating from the barn.

  I let a few rounds fly at the cluster of bushes, but I was exposed coming up the driveway. Both semi-automatics were turned on me; muzzles flashed, their gunshots echoing away. Agony erupted from my left shoulder blade, and I dropped to my knees, noticed my shirt staining fast around a blackish hole. I crawled for a large rock bordering the driveway, bullets chinking against the stone. I held my hand over the wound and slowed the leak.

  I peered out, keeping my head low to the ground. Where the hell was Tom Boy now? Was he still by the shrubs near the pilings? I sent one round at each bush, severing needles and a couple of branches.

  "Nick Constantine, is that you?" Tom Boy had an abrasive tone from too much smoking. I couldn’t pinpoint where he had called from.