by Brian Hodge
He looked up to seek solace in Lupo’s eyes when a scream the equal of his own rang out from the kitchen. Followed by the shattering and splash of what sounded like a pitcher. Full, naturally. Why not, why didn’t they just open up the faucets and flood the whole penthouse?
He wearily flipped his hand toward Lupo, toward the door. Sasha was out there somewhere gagging with revulsion. “Go see what’s wrong now.”
Tony hung his head in his hands. What had happened here, and to life in general? Control was spinning out of his grasp. This night had gone from bad to worse to absolute balls-to-the-wall nightmare. In my home, he thought numbly. They’ve been in my home!
He looked around at the other aquariums, undisturbed, and their intact beauty offered shallow comfort. Any one of them would have been painful to lose, but at least tolerable. But this? He felt as if he had lost family.
Justin, April — dead. In the most hideous ways he could dream up. He would draw out their agonies for hours and hours and—
Lupo was standing in the doorway. His face was even graver than it had been moments before.
“Well?” Tony said. “What was it?”
Then he saw what Lupo held.
Pale, waxy white, as if all the blood had drained away some time ago. It didn’t even look real. Looked like some gag gift you’d buy in a novelty shop and stick inside another kid’s lunchbox. Except for the ugly turquoise ring. Only one guy around with enough huevos to wear that thing and not care how it looked.
“At least now we know,” said Lupo. He threw it down in disgust. The severed hand splatted to the floor and lay there like a dead spider, fingers slightly curled inward. Tony saw the jagged shank of bone protruding through the wrist, and wondered if he might possibly have sadly underestimated Justin and April.
“We’ll have to take care of this ourselves now, Tony. Get your head on straight, and we’ll take care of this ourselves.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tony whispered. And took one more look at the chair.
It took one sick imagination to do that. Such malevolent glee. Twelve beautiful fish, killed, arranged into a circle, a crescent, and the last two by themselves.
A perfectly rendered smiley face.
She tossed, she turned. Knowing that nothing so simple as a change of positions was going to help. Tonight, for April, sleep was going to be a luxury.
Justin slept beside her, apparently soundly. Ironic, his sleeping better these past few nights than he had in ages. As if his self-esteem and sense of peace with himself had finally returned under fire.
She loved him; this she knew without question. And therein lay the paradox. He was, in fits and starts, rising to challenges. Yet April had to admit her initial attraction had been, in part, in response to his vulnerability. His teetering balance with pinwheeling arms, near the brink of ruin. Florence Nightingale to the rescue. Only Florence had done some teetering herself.
It had all started with the hands…
April sighed; shouldn’t have yelled at Justin quite so virulently in the car. On the ride back to the motel, he had filled her in on everything that had transpired while he and Kerebawa were in the condo. Destroying the aquarium, turning the piranha into a twisted game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. A nice touch, and it would definitely peel a few layers away from Tony’s already questionable sanity. But she had spared few adjectives in telling him just how blindly stupid he’d been in destroying evidence that could link Tony with Erik’s death, should the police ever decide to move on him. As well, Justin had told her of leaving the hired killer’s hand in a pitcher, a move Kerebawa especially seemed to enjoy. He told them of some drug lord in Colombia he had cornered and whose hand he’d amputated when the man went for a weapon. The two of them had laughed over it, some deep-seated bond forming between them that had as its foundation blood and bone and destruction. Savagery for its own psychologically devastating sake. She knew it was absolutely essential in having to fight someone of Tony’s ilk, but as Justin and Kerebawa laughed at his story, she had never felt quite so excluded from an inside joke. At that moment, there existed no cultural differences whatsoever between Justin and Kerebawa. Which, brotherhood-of-man rhetoric aside, she found unsettling. It made you wonder if, when the niceties of civilization were scraped away, men were just as primal now as they had been at the dawn of hominids and the opposable thumb.
Another hand-oriented reference. Freudian, no doubt. She was glad to have at least gotten rid of that severed extremity.
She’d nailed up a good front of nonchalance about it most of the time, but Justin would never know the unease it had caused her. Half out of irrational fear that somehow its owner’s purpose would remain a driving force. That she would awaken to find that it had crabwalked across the room and clamped itself around her throat to finish the job begun Saturday night.
The killer’s hand. Erik’s, too, she had to figure. It had all begun to mentally fester once they had learned of Erik’s fate.
She thought of sitting with Justin a couple nights ago, before their world had convulsed, as she was showing him the photo albums. It had been years since she had rearranged them, removing every photo shot since she was six that showed her father’s left hand.
What was left of it, anyway.
The day was etched into memory with vitriolic intensity. Cut into her brain, and the particular fissure would probably be labeled.
Six years old. Summer, home from school all day back in St. Pete, and second grade seemed farther away than the stars. Hot all day, like it was getting to be now.
Daddy had been on vacation too, using up one of his two weeks per annum while he puttered around the house doing Dad-things. Stuff that, to six-year-old minds, seemed to serve little purpose. He was turning the carport into a garage, walling it in.
Perfect summer day. She ran amok in the neighborhood, barefoot in the grass, neat little houses on a neat little street, and no matter where she went, she could hear the sounds of Daddy hammering. Daddy sawing. Daddy ripping boards down to proper size.
April had been in the backyard when a kid from across the street wandered over in the adjacent yard. Patrick, his name was. Patrick used the neighbor’s yard as a shortcut to get to some friend who lived the next block over. He was six, maybe seven.
“What are you doing?” he had asked.
“Planting food.”
April had some kernels of corn and a buckeye and was digging a small hole behind the bougainvillea. Patrick watched as she finished the hole and planted them in a row and covered them up. She wondered when they would start growing.
They talked about what they were going to be when they grew up. She was going to be a farmer. Patrick said he was going to be a doctor. Somehow this inspired a discussion of bodies. She no longer remembered the words, only that Patrick had a lot of mistaken ideas about female anatomy. He thought girls peed just like boys, thought they looked the same down below and everything. Not that she knew what boys looked like down there, but whatever he was describing, didn’t sound much like what she had.
So they made a deal.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Sounded good. It would clear up a lot of questions. She had always wondered how Daddy could manage to pee standing up without making a mess.
They lowered their shorts. Underwear too. They looked. They touched. Okay, so there were a few differences. Big deal.
And then Mommy was peering over the bougainvillea, forever on the lookout for new damage done by her tomboy daughter and drawn out to hunt because of a missing shovel. Her eyes widened. Her mouth started to shriek. April and Patrick looked up, raised their underwear and shorts, faces embossed with sudden guilt.
Mommy stormed around the bush and seized a kid in each hand, fingers clamping onto an ear on each head. Screeching about how awful they had been, touching each other’s bodies there, there of all places, and April was crying because it hurt, her ear would be ripped from her head, and Mommy was dragging them back
around front, their six-year-old feet struggling furiously to keep pace because Mommy’s legs were so much longer and so were her strides.
The three of them stormed noisily into the carport, now half garage. Sawdust lingered in the air, and she breathed in its hot, dry smell and coughed, tears streaking her cheeks. Daddy had to stop work, looking like some hot, red, wet version of the father she was used to, and as he listened to what Mommy had to say he got even hotter and redder. They sent Patrick bawling across the street with the threat that they would be calling his parents later — oh, the kiss of death.
Daddy was angry but kept his temper from getting the best of him, just kept telling her, “April, I’m disappointed in you, I’m very disappointed in you.” His words were lead, huge, crushing her down down down, his disappointment even worse than the three light swats he administered to her bottom. And as she stumbled into a corner, sobbing, she felt overwhelmed by a terrifying witches’ brew of love and hate in her heart.
Daddy began to work again.
The gratingly noisy table saw whirred to life once more. And there came the splintering whine of wood being cleaved in two by its blade.
And then Daddy suddenly lurched away from the table saw with a numb look on his face and his hand his hand it couldn’t be running like a red faucet couldn’t be bleeding that much couldn’t be in two pieces not that!
Mommy came running, aid and comfort and emergency medical care, hurriedly wrapping a rag around Daddy’s spouting hand as his face paled and drained, and now Mommy’s was the red face as she whirled upon her daughter cowering in the corner and shouted, “This is your fault this is all your fault, you distracted him, it’s your fault, April!”
Through the tears, inside the shrieks, the six-year-old April knew it was true, all horribly true.
Barring her brief stint working for and with Tony Mendoza, it was without doubt the worst incident of her life. But not without positive repercussions, strangely enough. It hadn’t really come up until college, when she’d ended up at Student Health Services with a grinding case of exhaustion, no small thanks due to a twenty-credit-hour semester. She had consented to a few sessions with a psych counselor, was rewarded with the usual analytical flow chart of cause-and-effect. A relentless desire to succeed because she was forever trying to make that day up to her father. No price too great to avoid his disappointment. Her counselor had even gone so far as to suggest that April made sure to choose pursuits where the results were tangible. Grades could be checked on a semester report. Artwork could be looked at, displayed. Ad infinitum.
She hadn’t gone back after that day. Fearful of making too much progress, maybe. She was used to success, lived with it comfortably. The so-called cure might very well undercut the drive.
And what would they think now, her parents? Just how proud and beaming would they be if they knew darling daughter was slumming in the drug milieu, in addition to her erstwhile pornvid feature? Shootings, burglarizing dealers, concealing a corpse, while her hard-won business risked suffocation via inattention. She steered her imagination away from it. So. They must never know, ever, whatever the cost.
Your fault, April. She could hear it now as easily as when she was six. And now, twenty-some years later, curled onto the bed of a cheap motel beside someone she thought was probably as damaged inside as she, April still couldn’t convince herself that it wasn’t.
Chapter 23
PRIORITIES
Come Tuesday morning, it was April’s turn to go to the office for the motel’s version of a free continental breakfast. More bad coffee, more tough doughnuts. As Justin ate, he thought of the Viet Cong in Nam, squatting in the jungle while eating rice and fish heads. No-frills food to toughen you up. Survive the coffee and doughnuts, and their abuse to kidneys and jaw muscles, and the rest of the day seemed more palatable.
The adrenaline boost of last night’s strikeback had carried over to this morning. His system still surged, in spite of April’s justifiably angry response to his destruction of the piranha tank. Her good morning kiss had been warm enough, so he’d apparently been forgiven. Buggering possible evidence, though, he couldn’t much blame her being angry. Yet everything was a tradeoff. Tony was probably giving himself ulcers by now.
Too hotheaded, I was too reckless, he thought. I’ve got to watch that. Because things were finally moving along, by their hands this time.
Justin looked across the little round table at Kerebawa, who was licking flakes of glaze from his fingers with loud, smacking gusto.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a couple of days,” Justin said. “How do you plan on getting home once all this is over?”
Kerebawa glanced up from wet, sticky fingers. “I hoped I would meet someone who would take me back to Miami-teri and help me find the skymen. Barrows and Matteson.”
“You’ve got that,” said April. “You’ve earned all the rides you need.”
Justin tipped his cup, and the coffee was history. “It might be better to take you down there right away. We’ve got most of the hekura-teri now anyway.”
“But not all.” He was shaking his head, no no no, fiercely stubborn. “I would never know about the rest.”
All because of a promise to a dead man. This guy’s sense of honor and duty was something out of a medieval code.
“I will destroy the hekura-teri we took last night,” Kerebawa went on. “I will destroy it this day. But I will not return to home until I destroy the last.”
Justin glanced sidelong at April. A sudden tightening of both their mouths. Trouble brewing was the unspoken translation.
“Kerebawa,” said April, her voice soft, placating, “we can’t destroy the powder. Not while Tony Mendoza is free.”
He peered up from his fingers again. His whole face sharpening. More trouble brewing.
“We might need it, either to try and get him in jail, or at least to have some control over him.”
Justin nodded. “Destroying the powder, that’s like throwing away the biggest weapon we’ve got against him.”
Kerebawa was back to shaking his head, even more fervently than before. “No! This was my promise to Padre Angus, to find the hekura-teri and destroy it! It has no place in your world. It has no place even in mine.”
“But it is here, and we’re in trouble because of it.” April the diplomat, unruffled and earnest. “If we need it to help ourselves, and it’s gone…” She held up her palms, implied defenselessness.
“Yeah, you’re not the only one around here who’s in a mess because of that stuff,” Justin said. “Most of your problems are taken care of. Five out of six. But ours? We haven’t managed to do much of anything about them.” He paused, looking for some sign, however small, of Kerebawa’s wavering. Like trying to read the thoughts of a brick wall. “Before we got up I was lying there awake, and I had this idea, how we might use the powder—”
“No. No!” Kerebawa rose from the table, legs widely stanced, hands curled into fists, knuckles braced against the tabletop. “You will need to find other ways.”
With that, he moved swiftly away from the table along the side of the unused bed. Knelt on the floor long enough to pull out the kilos of skullflush still in the grocery bag. His eyes were chips of onyx, his jaw granite. Justin rose, moved for the bag, feeling oddly that this seemed as ridiculous as some petty playground squabble among fourth graders. Stay away from my toys, or else.
Two steps closer, and Kerebawa knelt to his pile of belongings.
And reared back up with his machete. Arm cocked, ready to swing.
Justin froze. I don’t believe this don’t believe he’s pulling that blade on me. More disbelief than fear, on April’s face as well as his own. Which doubled when Justin found himself reaching for the Beretta atop the dresser and holding it at Kerebawa’s chest. At ten feet, there was little doubt of accuracy.
“Would you guys knock this off!” April shot to her feet, spoke sternly, but the unease was evident. Justin thought it likely th
at she knew he wouldn’t fire. Kerebawa, though, was a less definitive story; less apt to bluff. More apt to be like the countless tales of canines, gentle as lambs for years, who suddenly tear into the family child for reasons known only to primal instinct.
Seconds ticked by, metronomed by the bleedthrough voices of a TV in another room, muffled through the walls. Five, ten … they seemed a lot longer with the gun in his hand.
Finally Justin looked at it. Tossed it onto the bed, midway between himself and Kerebawa.
“You too,” April said to the Indian. Then to both: “This macho chest-pounding isn’t going to solve anything. Now put that machete down.”
It didn’t waver. Nor did his eyes.
“He’s not going to use it.” Maybe in his own home he would, but not here. Not with us. Not with what he’s learned over the years about our civilization. At least, that was what Justin was betting on. He looked straight at Kerebawa. “We owe you our lives. We’d be dead if it weren’t for you, we’re not forgetting that. But you wouldn’t have gotten back those five bags of hekura-teri if it hadn’t been for us. We need each other.”
Another several seconds. Sounded like a game show worming through the walls. At last he lowered the blade. Tossed toward the bed to clank against gunmetal.
No apologies though. Neither in voice, nor in demeanor. Rather refreshing, in a way. No chance for anything phony.
“We can talk,” Kerebawa said, and sat on the bed.
Justin took the floor, leaning back against the dresser. April returned to her seat at the table, like a mediator between the two. Justin frowned, composing his thoughts for a moment. Had to put everything in a context Kerebawa would best relate to.
“First off, I promise you — promise you — that we won’t do anything with the hekura-teri that would risk getting it back to Mendoza. But this land is our home, and we need to defend it from him.”
So far, so good. No recurring flashes of temper.