He leaned even closer, his sour breath tickling my ear. “But maybe I know a thing or two you don’t. I been busy while you were laid up. I got—I got some things to show you later. You’ll like ’em.”
That sour feeling deepened. Whatever Lazzaro was up to, I doubted it had anything to do with sunshine and rainbows. “Thanks, Frankie.”
“Nice fuckin’ work,” he said again. “Real nice.”
“Couldn’ta done it without you,” I said. My phony grin felt plastic, like it might fall off my face and crack on the floor, but I willed it to stay in place.
“Shit, tell these clowns that,” he grumbled. “They think it was all you, ya know? I mean, mostly it was, but we were on it together, huh? You’d never have done it without me, am I right?”
“That’s right,” I said, and then, stupidly: “But everybody knows that—I mean, you got made, too, right?”
“Ah, fuck no. I mean, yeah, I got straightened out, but not for that.” A crafty grin crept across his face.
“Oh,” I said. I had a sudden, very clear feeling that I didn’t want to know.
When I didn’t follow up, he moved closer, nearly pressing against me. “I got straightened out for taking care of the fucker hung you out to dry.” He spoke in a drunk’s whisper, which meant that he would have been audible halfway across the room if it hadn’t been for the music and the other people talking.
“The fucker . . . ?”
“Tinker-fuckin’-bell,” he said, this time loud enough that I swear the cops in the Fourteenth Precinct should have been able to hear him. Nobody turned, though. Nobody looked. He just kept talking. “Forty-five slug in one ear and out the other. Messy.” Glee lit up his face, lifting some of the drunken glaze. “It was supposed to be quiet and sudden-like, so he’d never know what hit him. But I made him beg some, first. You know a forty-five can take a man’s hand off at the wrist? I never knew that before. He screamed like a little bitch.” Lazzaro stood straighter, slapped a hand against my back. “They chewed me out for taking it too far, but they straightened me out anyway. Don’t you worry, buddy. I got your back. I know you got mine. Right?”
There was an edge in that last word I didn’t like at all, and a certain low nastiness had insinuated itself into his crafty expression. My bared teeth could no longer be mistaken for a smile. I had a crazy urge to go for his throat, tear it out like I was one of Kelsen’s demon animals, and leave Lazzaro in the middle of the floor to bleed out in front of everyone. This was one of the guys I thought of as almost like family? What the hell had I been thinking? Tink had been my friend, as much as anybody had. He’d really had my back, taken orders from me and backed me up when nobody else would have without his lead, and for his trouble he got a horrifying execution.
And Lazzaro’d gotten rewarded for it.
Lazzaro had become some kind of hero for perpetrating the bloody and excruciating death of one of our own. A hundred times I’d been on the edges of conversations like this, but I’d always ignored them, pushed them to some safe place in the back of my mind and kept moving. Not this time. I couldn’t do this anymore. I’d given up nearly everything it was possible to give up for these guys, and my own ambition, and one day, some sick fuck like Lazzaro—maybe Lazzaro himself—was going to put a bullet in my head for some stupid perceived transgression.
What had killing Kelsen solved? Nothing. Not one goddamn thing, if Lazzaro was just going to come along and take his place.
I knew then that I was getting out. I didn’t know how yet, but I was getting out. It was just a matter of logistics.
The break in conversation had gotten long enough to deepen the nasty look on Lazzaro’s face. Jesus, Jimmy. Stay cool. I forced the edges of my mouth to curl upward again. I felt like the Joker. “Yeah,” I said. Somehow.
“I got something you’ll want to get in on,” he went on. “We’ll talk about it later. Later,” he said, as though I’d tried to press the issue. He pulled his head back. “Hey, what are you drinkin’? Next one’s on me.” A lame joke—it was an open bar.
“Don’t sweat it,” I said.
“Don’t be like that. Bartender! I need a . . .” He leaned over, made a show of inspecting my glass, then looked at me. “What the fuck are you drinking?”
“Ginger ale,” I muttered.
It seemed to take half an hour for the words to penetrate Lazzaro’s skull, and once there, they still didn’t add up. “Did you say . . . ? The fuck, Jimmy?”
“Doctor’s orders.” A lie, but he wouldn’t understand the truth. I’d had a lot of time in bed to think about things, to watch the people around me, and to draw some conclusions. Benedict drank from his flask, but you didn’t have to look too hard to see that it was really the flask sucking Benedict dry, and the H had its claws so deep into Haverty that she had to magic the shit up to even get a thrill out of it anymore. I had one addiction already—even now, I felt the magic whispering to me, cajoling me to call upon it for trivial things—and I didn’t need another one. I’d had half a glass of champagne with the bosses, and it had been soda pop and water after that.
“No shit?” Lazzaro asked.
“None.” I held out a pale hand. I didn’t have to fake the trembling. “Still on the mend.”
“That sucks.”
“Could be worse.”
“Yeah.” He shifted uncomfortably, like I had revealed myself to be some kind of sinister space alien—or maybe just the reminder of what I’d gone through was enough to make him edgy. “Hey, there’s Patsy. I gotta go talk to him. Don’t forget to come see me later,” he said, and he worked his way into the crowd.
Beyond him, I could see Benedict slouching against the far wall, watching me.
Chapter 23. The World Outside
I woke, covered in sweat, heart doing its damnedest to bust a hole through my chest wall and make a break for it. I rolled over, checked the closet. No need to turn on the light—I never turned it off anymore.
The closet held no traces of ash or soot, and the burning smell that lingered might have been my imagination. Who could tell anymore?
I checked the clock. Twenty-one minutes. Not bad. Within striking distance of my all-time post-hospital sleep record of twenty-four minutes in a stretch, so I must have been doing something right.
“Drugs, Jimmy. You need drugs.” I couldn’t count the number of times I’d told myself that in the week since I got out, since I got straightened out. Lies, every time. I knew better. For one thing, that seemed like a step too far down Haverty’s path. For another, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the dreams were related to real life somehow, that maybe they were a message, and if I slept through them, I’d miss a crucial warning and end up dead. And after that . . .
Yeah, I didn’t think about after anymore, if I could help it. Not when I was awake, anyway.
When I was asleep . . . Well, my subconscious was endlessly inventive in devising ways to torment me. Kelsen came back to me, over and over again, usually spouting the same shit he had in my earlier hallucination or journey, or whatever it was. Sometimes he was in slightly better shape, but mostly he looked like hell, and there wasn’t a whole lot left of him. Sometimes . . . sometimes it was bad. Really bad. Once it was so bad, the images so disgusting and foul, that I jolted awake and raced to the sink just in time to miss the target and barf all over the counter. That dream had stayed with me the whole day, creeping into my mind when my guard was low, making me queasy every time.
Other times it wasn’t Kelsen. It was the thing, the Devourer I’d dragged up from Hell and unleashed on my enemies. Those times, I was sometimes forced to witness it tearing apart the Russian gangsters. Those were the least bad dreams—they were horrible, but not much worse than watching a particularly bloody movie. I wasn’t involved, you know? Other times, I couldn’t see, couldn’t move, but I could hear the thing muttering and chuckling in my ear, and I could almost make out the words—threats, dire imprecations, prophecies, worse. Those stayed with me, too, and s
ometimes I imagined I could hear the thing talking to me in the middle of the day, at the club, or as I drove.
And there were the dreams of that poor burned bastard I’d incinerated so long ago. I knew they were dreams, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the guy and wishing he could finally get some rest, rather than having me drag him back for one grisly cameo after another in the twisted cinema of my nightmares.
I gave up sleep for the night and went to make some coffee. My hand shook as I measured out the grounds, spilling rich brown dust over the counter. I ignored the spill and dumped the rest into the filter, then measured out some more. Strong coffee. It wouldn’t do anything for the shaking in my hands, or the weakness in my limbs, or my jumpiness, but it would make me feel marginally less like shit while I was up all night.
Up all night. Again. The worst part was the boredom. Hour after hour, with nobody else in the world moving, nobody to talk to, nothing to do, and I could feel the magic calling me. That was all I’d done with my downtime before—research, and more research, and playing with my favorite dark powers. Now I’d catch myself mumbling a snatch of incantation, feeling that familiar build, wanting to reach out and pull the magic to me, to finish one small spell and feel, for one moment, like I wasn’t the half-dead thing I’d become. The only thing that stopped me was the image of Doc Haverty, the flame in her palm, the needle, the spoon. The slack grin on her face.
I sat at my kitchen table, drinking too-strong coffee, waiting for the sun to come up, thinking about making a phone call but never quite mustering the guts.
* * *
Around noon, I pulled together my frayed nerves and went out to find Benedict. I went armed. I never went anywhere without a gun anymore. It was stupid, but not as stupid as reaching for the magic if I ended up in a tight spot.
I stopped at his apartment first, hoping he hadn’t gone to the club yet. I had a lot on my mind, the kind of stuff I wanted to discuss in private or not at all. The climb up the stairs felt like it would never end, and I remembered how winded I’d been the first time I followed him up. God, that had been a long time ago.
I waited until my breath caught up with me at the top, and then I knocked. Perhaps I could have disarmed the wards and walked in, like the old days, but my relationship with Benedict had become a strange, unknown thing, and I didn’t feel like walking in on him was such a good idea anymore.
No answer after the first knock, nor any sound. For a moment, I wondered if Benedict had relocated, but the door was still the same pristine, glowing wood as always, and I thought it unlikely it would have remained that way in his absence. I knocked louder.
The door opened a crack, and I flinched at the hollow-eyed specter that stared out at me.
“Knew it was you,” Benedict said. The word “drunk” wasn’t even close to an adequate description of his condition. “Bombed” was closer, though he was so far gone that I’d have to draft other words into service to fully cover it. Strafed. Nuked. Anthraxed. Something. It was a goddamn miracle he was standing, even slumped against the doorframe like he was. His eyes were red, the lower lids hanging open like hideous toothless smiles, his hair hadn’t been washed in days, and the alcohol fumes coming off him could have pickled a corpse.
I did my best not to wrinkle my nose. “Jesus,” I said.
“He ain’t here.”
“I figured.” We stared at each other. Benedict wore the expression of injured hostility unique to the very drunk. I can’t imagine what my face looked like. Neutral, I hoped, but I doubted it—scared and disgusted, more likely. I’d had no idea Benedict had gotten so bad. If the other guys found him like this once, they’d let it slide, but if it got to be a regular thing he’d be lucky to get off with a beating.
“C’mon in. Have a drink.” He turned away, leaving the door to hang open behind him.
I went inside.
Benedict sat in one of the big leather chairs, and I eased into the other. We made a hell of a pair—he’d stumbled and staggered the whole way, and I’d creaked like an old man. As I sat, I saw that he’d dispensed with glasses entirely and was drinking Four Roses straight from a nearly empty bottle. He waved it at me in a vaguely offerlike gesture, but I shook my head.
“What can I do for you, Jimmy?”
All at once, my mouth dried up. There it was—an opening large enough to drive a stolen truck through. Some resolutions fade almost as soon as they’re made—I’m gonna drop ten pounds, I’m gonna quit smoking, I’m gonna blah blah blah—but my determination to get out of the Mafia had only hardened since talking with Lazzaro at the party. The question was how. Kit might welcome me and she might not, but it didn’t matter. If I went into hiding, my “friends” would go right after my family and drag me out again. And if I took Ma and my old man with me, tore them away from their home, friends, and business, Benedict would still find me. Under normal circumstances, I’d have rated my chances at avoiding him at nearly a hundred percent—Kelsen had had pretty good luck there—but I couldn’t forget the blood on the card from the induction ceremony. As long as he had that, nowhere on earth was safe for me. I couldn’t hide from my own blood.
I could kill him and take it. Not the first time I’d had that thought, but every time it crossed my mind I thought of Lazzaro shooting pieces off Tink in some stinking alley, and I recoiled from the idea. I wasn’t ready to go that far. Not yet. I had time to figure something else out.
Benedict’s eyes narrowed, and I had the sudden impression he could sense my thoughts. “Well?” he asked.
I started, and then I realized he only wanted an answer to his earlier question. “I’m in a bad way, Benedict,” I said.
“Aren’t we all.”
“Yeah, well.” I could see that. “I meant something different. I mean . . .”
“Yeah?”
I chickened out. “You said—what was it you said? The price. You said eventually the price gets to be too high.”
He nodded, and maybe it was my imagination, but I thought some of the haze had cleared.
“You said eventually they’ll hollow me out and wear me like a suit.”
Another nod, and by God he actually put the bottle down on the floor next to his chair.
“I think—I’m pretty far gone. I don’t know how much more I can do before . . . you know.”
“You’re young, Jimmy. You’ve got more time than you think.” He said it with assurance, but part of me couldn’t help wondering if he had any fucking idea. How would he know?
“You said there were others like us.”
“There are.”
“Does anybody know anything about this, really? Is there somebody I can talk to?”
He sighed and slumped down in his chair. “It doesn’t matter. The damage is done. It’s not gonna get any better. We ignore the call as long as we can, and then—I think we all end the same way, Jimmy. Eventually.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said.
A long pause, and my stomach sank. Benedict, it seemed, wasn’t nearly as drunk as I’d thought he was. His eyes gleamed with sharp intelligence.
“What are you trying to say, Jimmy?”
I held his gaze, saying nothing. The eerie soundlessness of the apartment swelled around me, became a bloated, crushing thing that made it difficult to draw breath. Neither Benedict nor I spoke. I strained my ears for the sound of traffic, a ticking clock, anything that would give me an excuse to look away. For a full minute, seemingly half a lifetime, we stared at one another.
“There’s no straight for guys like us,” Benedict finally whispered, and his voice cracked. He covered his face with his hands.
I waited for a minute, maybe five. Then I got up to leave.
“Wait,” Benedict said. “Got some of your stuff.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. Your stuff. We picked it up at the warehouse when we found you.” He went into the other room and came out a few moments later with a shoebox. Inside was a small collection of my personal
effects. A money clip with a fat wad of twenties. The chicken-bone fetish we’d used to catch Kelsen. A key ring. My old cell phone.
I put everything in my pockets except the chicken-bone contraption. That goddamn thing could stay right where it was.
“Thanks.”
* * *
Tired and dispirited, I made my way to the club. I knew what to expect. All afternoon I’d have guys coming up to me. “Hey, meet me at Andy’s tonight if you want in on something.” “Hey, you lookin’ for work?” “Hey, how’s it goin’? Got something you might want a piece of.” Nonstop, throughout the afternoon. I’d probably take somebody up on it, just to keep up appearances. I’d done that a few times so far, and it turned out I didn’t have to do much more than show my face. Word had percolated through the cracks in the street, down to the underworld, and one look at my pale face and sunken eyes was enough to remind the most hardened thug that, oh yeah, he did have that money.
I had guys clamoring to be on my crew, too. Bottom-feeders, for the most part, but some good guys who were having a tough time breaking in. I made encouraging noises at the decent guys, and I’d even called them up a couple of times to help out on a score. I should have told them to run, far away. Take up plumbing or electrical work. Joining the union should be the closest they ever got to the mob, if they were smart. They weren’t smart. Pass up all that easy money, when all it required was a willingness to be nastier than the other guy? Not these clowns.
I went in, head already aching in anticipation of the noise and smoke. Some guys waved at me. I waved back. I guess I could have taken a seat at the big kids’ table, but I didn’t feel up to it. I wasn’t even sure why I was here, other than habit. Keeping up appearances, maybe.
It would be easy to slide back into this, I thought. Put together a crew with the guys I sort of trusted, pad it with the bottom-feeders, start making some serious money. But where did it end? I was a hero for committing one of the most horrifying acts of my life, and I wasn’t looking forward to doing an encore.
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