‘And how about Ashley Littleton?’
He stared at me with icy eyes and said, ‘I know nothing about her.’
‘I think you’re lying,’ I said.
Melchiori stood over me and shook his head sadly as though I were a small and bothersome creature. ‘You show bad judgment too.’
‘Who did Belinda Mabry come with to your party?’
A little smile formed on his big mouth. ‘Now why would I tell you that?’
‘Because you don’t want me to break your knees?’
For a big man he moved quickly. He kicked me in the ribs. I tried to grab his foot but was much too slow and the air punched out of my lungs again. As I fought for breath, he said, ‘You want to know about Belinda Mabry, you should ask her son. He spends all his time begging free drinks at Little Vegas.’
Belinda’s son, I thought. And mine. I said, ‘He drives in all the way from the Intracoastal to go to your club?’ Talking hurt.
‘Comes in four or five nights a week.’
‘Why would he do that?’
He looked at me again like I was slow. ‘Jesus, I kicked you in the ribs, not the head. I suppose he likes the girls.’
‘He could find better clubs close to home. Clubs where girls actually show up.’
‘Maybe he likes to slum. Like his mother.’
I lunged for his legs but he neatly sidestepped me.
I looked up at him. ‘Did you kill my cat?’
He glanced at Darrin with a smile. ‘Maybe I did get him in the head.’ He glared down at me. ‘Why in the world would I kill your cat?’
‘I don’t know. Why in the world would you headbutt me and punch me in the stomach?’
‘Because you’re a pain in the ass, Mr Byrd. You ask questions you shouldn’t ask.’
‘Who brought Belinda Mabry to the party?’ I asked.
‘Ah, fuck you.’ He turned to Darrin. ‘Get rid of him.’
But as Darrin came for me another man stepped into the room, an old man with tear-stain scars under his eyes and a spotless white shirt buttoned up to his neck. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Charles said.
Melchiori looked annoyed. ‘Who are you?’
Charles nodded toward me. ‘His friend.’
A deep laugh erupted from Melchiori’s chest. ‘This old man is your backup?’ he asked, then said to Darrin, ‘Get these scumbags out of my house.’
Charles reached down, unzipped his zipper and pulled out his penis.
‘Huh,’ Darrin said.
Melchiori was furious. ‘I’m going to tear your head off.’
‘He’s crazy, Mr Melchiori,’ Darrin said but Melchiori was already coming at Charles.
Charles started to piss. Melchiori froze, so angry he couldn’t move, and watched a heavy stream of urine splatter on his white carpet. Charles pissed for a full minute and more. Then he shook his penis and tucked it into his pants.
Melchiori, his face flushed, looked at the ruined carpet, made a choking sound and came at Charles again. But he’d lost his inner balance. As Melchiori stepped up to him, Charles shot a fist into his stomach and an elbow into his face. A bone cracked – Melchiori’s nose or jaw – and he started to fall. Darrin fired his gun at Charles. The bullet hit Melchiori’s shoulder.
Charles caught Melchiori against him, hoisted him to his chest. Melchiori was twice Charles’ size but Charles held him as though he were stuffed with cotton. If Darrin wanted to shoot at Charles again he would have to shoot through Melchiori’s body.
Charles whispered something in Melchiori’s ear and stepped toward Darrin, clutching the big man to him. Darrin tried to get an angle on Charles but couldn’t find the shot. Charles stepped closer. ‘Put the gun down,’ he said calmly.
‘Fuck you,’ Darrin said and dodged to the side.
But Charles turned with him, dancing with Melchiori. Melchiori’s eyes had turned glazy and saliva was running on to his chin.
‘Fuck,’ Darrin yelled and turned for the door.
‘Run,’ said Charles calmly. ‘Run, run, run.’
Darrin did.
Charles laid the big man on the carpet. Melchiori’s leg rested in the pool of urine. He stared at the air above him and rasped to no one in particular, probably Charles and me both, ‘I’m going to kill you.’
Charles came to me. ‘You all right?’
‘Scratches and scrapes,’ I said.
‘Then get up.’
He gazed around the living room, spotted the handkerchief Melchiori had thrown at me and used it to lift Melchiori’s phone off the receiver. He dialed 911 with a knuckle. When the operator answered, Charles said, ‘Gunshots on McGirts Boulevard,’ gave Melchiori’s street address and hung up.
He looked down at Melchiori. ‘You’ll live,’ he said, ‘though you might regret it.’
Melchiori rasped, ‘Fuck you.’
Charles asked me, ‘You want to burn down the house?’
Melchiori flinched but said nothing and we left him and went outside to Charles’ car. Darrin’s pickup truck was gone. As we pulled out of the driveway I rolled down my window and listened to the night. Tree frogs chirped in the branches. A small airplane, invisible in the darkness, tore gently across the sky. There were no sirens.
I asked Charles. ‘What did you whisper to Melchiori when you caught him?’
‘I told him I’d kill him if his blood stained my shirt.’
‘You’re a crazy old man.’
‘That’s what makes me so lovable,’ he said.
‘Yeah, to other wolverines.’
As we turned from McGirts on to Grand Avenue and crossed the Ortega River, a police cruiser flew past, its lights flashing.
‘Melchiori says that Terrence Mabry hangs out at Little Vegas,’ I said.
‘Then we’ll need to talk to your boy again.’
‘Don’t call him my boy.’
‘OK.’
We rode quietly for a while and I said, ‘The pissing thing. I’ve never seen that before.’
‘I’ve never done it before. I wanted Melchiori to know this city isn’t his own. Not even his house.’ He turned the corner on to Roosevelt Boulevard and squinted up at a road sign. ‘And besides’ – he shrugged – ‘I needed to piss.’
ELEVEN
I first called Charles’ number two weeks after he wrote it on the back of a Worman’s Deli receipt. The brother of the man whose neck I’d broken had tracked down my address and shown up at my front door with a couple of friends. My dad had scared them off with his Ruger and afterward had called the police, who’d told him there was nothing they could do unless he got a judge to issue an order of protection or actual violence was committed. And I was a problem in the community anyway so why didn’t he get me out of town until the trial? After lying low for a few days, the brother and his friends waited one morning until my dad drove away from the house, then crossed the yard with tire irons which they used to demolish the front door. By the time the police came, they were gone. We hung a new door. Two days later the brother and his friends returned and demolished it too.
When I called and explained the situation, Charles asked, ‘You sure you want to stop them?’
They’d scared me out of my mind. ‘Of course.’
‘Because once you stop them you can’t start them again.’
I didn’t know what that meant. ‘I’m sure,’ I said.
‘All right then.’ He sounded pleased. ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow at noon.’
‘What for?’
‘Be in front of your house,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to wait.’
A few minutes before twelve the next day, a brown Buick sedan with a white vinyl roof pulled into the driveway. Charles sat at the wheel, dressed in his bright white shirt, buttoned to the top, his hands and tear-scarred face looking freshly scrubbed. ‘You ready?’ he asked as I climbed in.
‘For what?’
He hit the accelerator. ‘The rest of your life.’
We drove into a rough scrub
by wetland east of downtown where loggers had cut and pulped pines in the first decades of the twentieth century. It was early October but the sun was high and hot and we kept the windows up and the air conditioner streaming cold.
Charles left the highway and drove for a quarter mile on an asphalt strip and, when the asphalt ended, a sand and dirt road that wound through pines and cypress. The road ended at a clearing. At the far end was a wooden shack that you could use as a hunting blind, and to the side were four posts as thick as telephone poles, the bottom ends buried in the ground, the tops rising eight feet or so into the air. Chained to three of the poles were the brother of the man whose neck I’d broken and his two friends. Charles had stripped off their shirts and shoes and the morning sun had baked their faces, chests and shoulders red. I didn’t know what else Charles had done but they seemed stoned, barely able to keep on their feet. They didn’t look at us, didn’t seem to know we were there.
‘When I called you I didn’t mean this,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to stop them.’
Charles looked at me straight. ‘I’m stopping them.’
‘We’ve got to let them go—’
‘It’s too late for that,’ he said.
Charles walked toward the men. I stood where I was and yelled after him, ‘Why did you bring me here?’
‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘Not me. As far as I’m concerned I don’t even exist except for you right now, my friend.’
So I followed him across the clearing. He said, ‘If you stand outside, shivering bare-chested all night long in the cool swamp air, and then sweat in heat like this without water for six or seven hours, you’ll start hallucinating.’ He stepped up to the brother and slapped his cheeks twice. The man groaned but his eyes never focused.
Charles went to the other men and slapped them too. Flies swarmed around the third man’s belly.
‘Give them something to drink,’ I said.
Charles narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Now? Are you crazy?’
He went to his car and opened the trunk. I moved close to the brother. His breath stunk like nothing living.
I whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’
His brown eyes, bloodshot and glazed, brought me into focus. He looked hurt and confused, as though someone had pulled a terrible joke on him and he was just figuring out the damage. He pursed his lips and I thought he would speak to me but he tried to spit. He was too weak and his mouth too dry. Thick flecks of saliva fell on to his chin.
Charles came back with a small pistol and held it against the man’s temple.
‘No,’ I said quietly.
‘Yes,’ he said and pulled the trigger.
The man’s head jerked and fell against his chest and the gunshot echoed through the trees like cracking wood. The wound barely bled.
‘Just enough to do the job,’ Charles said to me or to himself or to no one at all. That turned out to be his first lesson. Shed no more blood than necessary. Don’t break a sweat if a task doesn’t require exertion. Save your energy because sooner or later you’ll need it. Do just enough to do the job.
He went to the second man and shot him in the head, then to the third and shot him too. The sound bounced through the trees and passed into the distance and he said, ‘There’s no such thing as a clean killing but you can do a lot to reduce the mess.’
Bile rose in my throat and I stooped, trying to settle my stomach.
Charles went to the car, put away the gun and returned with a shovel. ‘In this soil you’ll hit water in about two and a half feet. Set a body in the hole and cover it properly and it’ll rot away in a year. In two years you can use it to compost a rose garden and except for metal fillings and maybe a tooth or two, you’ll never know the difference.’
Vomit rose from my belly and I pitched forward on to my hands and knees and let it come out as if I could rid my insides of the guilt of these three men’s deaths. I stayed on my hands and knees long after I was done, rocking forward and back.
Charles waited until I stopped, then stuck the blade of the shovel into the soft dirt in front of my face and said, ‘Best thing for that is work.’
He sat, his legs crossed under him, while I dug the hole. When I was done we heaved the bodies into the ground and shoveled dirt over them. Charles tamped the grave flat and solid with the back of the shovel blade. Afterward he said, ‘These guys have disappeared. No one will ever know where they went. But everyone will know what happens to men who mess with you. People will fear you now.’
He walked to the car and I followed him, dropped the shovel into the trunk and got in beside him. I vowed that afternoon to reject every lesson Charles tried to teach me and, most of all, to let the fear that I could inspire turn to dust. I vowed to forget I’d met him and forget the part of me that was like him.
At one-thirty a.m., my ribs aching where Don Melchiori had kicked me and my forehead throbbing where he’d butted me, we pulled into my Best Gas station. My night manager, an Indian named Atul Mehta, put down the Car and Driver magazine he was reading and his smile fell away when he saw my bloodied face.
I shook my head. ‘Just a small accident, Atul.’ I went to the display of bandages, aspirin and cold medicines that we kept behind the counter and took two packages of gauze and a box of Band-aids. Charles helped himself to a Pepsi from the refrigerator case.
In the bathroom I stripped off my bloodstained shirt and stuffed it in the trash, dampened the gauze pads in the sink and cleaned my face. The wound on my forehead bled again so I tamped it until the skin looked moist and pink, and I put a Band-aid over it. There was nothing I could do for the bruises rising over my ribs. I went to my office and put on one of the Best Gas T-shirts that I kept in a box in the closet. When I came out, Charles and Atul were talking about a Ferrari pictured on the front cover of Car and Driver.
Charles nodded at me with a little smile as if he approved of how I’d cleaned up. ‘Home?’ he asked.
‘Home,’ I agreed.
Charles drove fast and smooth, and riding with him even in the daytime felt like getting caught in a rushing dream. I closed my eyes and may have slept because when I opened them again we were crossing the bridge a half mile from my house. I said nothing but watched Charles drive. He breathed slowly and looked calm as though restfulness for him was jetting over a bridge at ninety miles an hour.
When we pulled on to my block, two police cruisers were parked in my driveway and the lights were on inside the house. For a moment I panicked. Had the man who’d killed Fela come back and harmed Susan and Thomas? But I realized that if that were the case there would be more activity – more police cars, emergency vehicles and television news vans. No, the police were there for me, not for them.
Charles must’ve come to the same conclusion. He slowed his car and stopped two houses from mine. ‘I can’t go with you,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Don’t say any more than you need to,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to tell me that.’ I climbed out of the car.
‘Call me in the morning,’ he said, hit the accelerator and was gone.
Susan and Thomas sat in the living room with Daniel Turner and two other officers in uniform. Susan had on cotton pajamas and Thomas the jeans and black T-shirt he’d worn all day. Susan and Thomas looked relieved to see me, Daniel and the others less so. ‘We heard you were in an accident,’ Susan said.
‘You talked to Atul?’ I said.
‘When Daniel came, I called the station and asked Atul to let me know if you showed up.’
‘And asked him not to tell me that you were looking for me?’
Daniel nodded, ‘At my request.’
‘I’ll have to fire him,’ I said.
Daniel shook his head, disgusted. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Out for a drive.’
‘You told me this afternoon that you would come right in to the station.’
‘A long drive,’ I said.
One of the uniformed officers asked,
‘Without your car?’
‘I went with a friend.’
‘Charles Tucker?’ Daniel asked.
I saw no reason to answer.
Daniel glared at me.
I held my wrists toward him. ‘You going to arrest me?’
‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to come in and talk voluntarily.’
Thomas said, ‘Don’t do it, Dad.’
Susan and I stared at him.
‘Not without a lawyer,’ he said. ‘Not unless they arrest you.’
Daniel spoke to him gently. ‘We don’t suspect your dad of anything. We just want him to help us straighten out a few facts.’
‘You could do that here,’ Thomas said and I realized he was afraid that I was guilty of something terrible.
‘It’s OK,’ I said to him but told Daniel, ‘Thomas is right. We can talk here. I’m not hiding anything.’
Daniel shook his head. ‘Your life is nothing if not hiding.’
I sat next to Thomas on the sofa. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
One of the uniformed officers said, ‘What happened to your forehead?’
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘If you don’t help, I’ll have to arrest you, BB,’ Daniel said. ‘You know I don’t want to do that.’
‘On what charge?’ I asked.
‘You decide. Assault and battery: Bobby Mabry’s burned hands. Breaking and entry: Ashley Littleton’s house.’ He glanced at Susan and Thomas, then back at me. ‘Suspicion of murder: Ashley Littleton’s roommate, Brianna Sumner.’
He didn’t mention the shooting of Don Melchiori and that came as a relief. I said, ‘None of that’s true except the breaking and entry if you want to stretch the point.’
‘We could charge you and hold you for a couple of weeks while we make sure you’re clear.’
I considered my options and said to Susan, ‘Why don’t you and Thomas get some sleep. This might take a while.’
She stayed in her chair.
I leaned toward her and said as politely as I could, ‘Please get Thomas the hell out of here.’
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