by Paula Cox
Tool leads us to the apartment’s main door. He presses a buzzer. The door beeps and opens.
“Told him I was another girl.” Tool smiles as we walk into the building. “Stupid bastard thinks he’s about to have a threesome.”
Normally, I’d laugh, just to help the day along. But I can’t get Emily’s face out of my head, the fear in her features when the sleazy bastard pulled her into his lap. I know he’s done worse things—much worse things—but seeing him handle Emily like that burns into my mind. I clench and unclench my fists, bloody intent making my muscles hard, my senses honed. I’m not Jude anymore. I’m more than Jude. I’m a killer, stalking. The other guys, even Tool, keep their distance from me; I must look mad, scary, mad and scary.
“Which apartment is it?” I ask.
Tool tells me.
I run up the stairs, past graffiti-covered walls and over discarded needles. All around us, the sounds of drunk and high people smash through the walls. Somebody stumbles; somebody cackles; a plate shatters; a woman screams. I run faster, mind going into overdrive: Pull my woman into your lap, eh? Make my woman scared for her life? Fucking use my woman like she’s a toy? Try and hurt my woman? He’s a fucking dead man. No question. He’s dead. Fucking dead!
“Jude,” Tool mutters, at my shoulder. “You okay, man?”
“Fine,” I say, voice distorted because I’m growling like a beast.
We gather outside the door.
“Who’s doing the honors?” Tool asks.
I kick the door so hard all the hinges snap loose. It flies through the air like a tiny piece of fluttering paper and lands with a pathetic thump. The apartment is even more of a mess than mine was before Emily got her hands on it. The couch is not so much a couch as a threadbare collection of fabric and plywood. The walls are bare and black with damp. The floor is uncarpeted and reeks of alcohol and drugs. Needles are scattered everywhere like deformed flower stems.
The woman stands near the door, just to the side, and Barry sits on the couch, facing the door. The small, beady-eyed man is shirtless, displaying his twisted muscles. He’s small, but some men have a violent aura around them no matter their size, and Barry is one of them. I get the sense looking at this piece of piss that he wouldn’t flinch at hurting a child, a woman, anybody. A killer, like me, sure—but so much fucking worse ’cause at least I leave innocents out of it.
His beady eyes do something impossible when he sees us; they go wide.
He leaps to his feet, reaching into the waistband of his jeans. He fumbles. Reaches again. But it’s too late. I’m across the room like a torpedo. The world seems to slow as my heartbeat speeds up. I see individual beads of sweat dripping down the man’s naked upper body. I see his teeth, biting down on his lower lip. I see the way his hands shake and I see the light dusting of white powder around his nose. I hear him yelp. I hear the hooker run from the apartment.
Then time speeds up and my fist crunches into his stomach.
He keels over, collapsing onto the couch in a bundle.
I smack him in the face. I feel his cheekbone crunch. I smack him again.
“No! Please! No! Please!” he wails, bringing his hands to his head.
“No?” I spit. “No? You’re going to beg me? That’s your fucking plan? We know all about you, you fucking pedophile. We know about all the shit you’ve done.” I kneel down, grab him by the neck, and bring my face so close to his I can smell the coke. “And do you think I’ve forgotten about the way you grabbed Emily, like she was a piece of fucking meat for you to enjoy? Do you really think I’d let you get away with that, you fucking moron?”
I head-butt him. His nose caves and blood, powdered white, gushes down his front.
“P-p-please,” he whispers. “Just . . . please.”
“Have some goddamn self-respect,” I snarl.
I lift him by the neck so he’s on his feet. He tries to fall backward, but I hold him up. His arms hang limply at his sides.
“Not so nice, is it, having a big mean bastard in your face when there’s nothing you can do about it? Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you fucking raped children!” I explode on the last words, crushing my hand around his windpipe.
He splutters and dribbles, spit dripping down his chin in big phlegmy globules. I see Emily’s face, running continuously like a stuck DVD in my mind. I imagine this piece of shit tailing kids in his car, grabbing them . . . using them. My blood has turned to ice, lava, fire; my blood has run with hatred and killer’s intent more times than I can count. Now, it runs with a strong protective urge. I’m no longer in some hooker’s rundown crack house. I’m standing on the shore of a lake watching the bubbles of my dying parents rise to the surface. I have to do something.
“P-p-p—”
“Prick!” I let go of him and take a step back. I feel the others at my shoulders, ranged either side of me, but all of them know better than to get in my way right now, just as any smart man knows to get the hell out of the way when a bull comes charging at him.
A hush falls over the apartment, as though everybody knows what’s about to happen. The Judas Kiss has become a sort of joke around the bar at this point, but just because Tool has a laugh over it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t feared. I take another step back, aiming. Barry totters from side to side, a drunken man struggling to stay on his feet.
“You’ll never hurt anybody again.”
My voice is iron.
I jump, spin—and give him a Judas Kiss which sends him hurtling over the back of the couch, flipping head over toe, and landing in a crumpled pile on the floor. I jump through the air, throwing my entire weight behind my right fist, an MMA-style move that earns me a gasp from everybody, even Tool. I never know exactly what I look like when I give anyone a Judas Kiss, but Tool once told me it was like a giant mousetrap flinging shut.
I walk to the edge of the room. Barry moans softly from behind the couch. He coughs; he gurgles.
“Finish him off.” I wave a hand at the men. None of them argue.
They walk around the back of the couch and lay into him. His gurgling and coughing is replaced with whelping.
I turn my back on the scene and inspect my knuckles. They’re cut and grazed, but that doesn’t bother me much. It’s tough to think of a time in my life when my knuckles haven’t been cut and grazed.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, calming myself.
The prick who pulled Emily into his lap will never hurt anybody else.
A scream—a shout—and finally a gargling, choking noise.
“It’s done,” Tool says.
“Good,” I reply.
It’s only when we leave the apartment and a few pedestrians look at me sideways, I realize I’m coated top to bottom in a misty layer of blood.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jude
When we get back to the bar, the only thing on my mind—except for Emily, who is always on my mind, even if every so often she’s a background track—is cleaning myself off. I make toward the bathroom as the other guys go to the bar for a drink. I’m about to enter it when Mickey’s voice cuts through the bar. He speaks quietly, but it’s the quietness of a feared king, the quietness of a man who knows he never has to raise his voice to be heard.
“Jude, my office.”
I go into the backroom, past containers of whisky and potato chips, and into the small office hidden in the back. I walk in and Mickey gestures at the seat opposite his. A man like Mickey, you’d expect him to have a grand, kingly office, but this room is bare and plain, the chairs simple wooden stools, the desk devoid of any personal indulgences. It’s a Spartan office.
I sit down. If Mickey has any problem with me smearing blood all over the chair, he shows no sign. He doesn’t seem to notice the blood at all. But then, he’s Mickey, the leader of this crime family. His entire life has been spent in the presence of blood.
“Heard you gave the man a Judas Kiss,” Mickey comments, with the shadow of a smile.
How does this man know everything?
He reads my expression, and then says: “Tool texted me. In code, of course.”
“I just did my job,” I mutter. Too much is made of this Judas Kiss business. It’s almost as though a man can’t just go about his work without people twisting his bloody tasks into some kind of heroic gesture. Judas Kiss, is, really, only, a punch, and yet people treat it like some emblem of the life.
Mickey grins openly now. “Yes, yes, I know. We don’t have to indulge in all that nonsense, do we? That’s why I called you in here, actually. I’ve got your pay.”
Already? You go freelance, you get paid when you work; you sign up with a family, you wait for the cuts to be spread out.
“And a bonus,” Mickey goes on. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a huge roll of twenty-dollar bills. At a glance, I’d guess there was around twenty thousand dollars there. He casually counts out ten thousand dollars and slides it across the table. Then he counts out another three and drops it on the pile. I take the money, roll it up, and stuff it in my pocket.
“Thanks, boss,” I say.
Mickey waves a hand. “You’ve earned it. That asshole didn’t deserve to live. That’s the truth about some men, Jude. They don’t deserve to breathe. How much do you know about natural selection?”
I blink at him, dumbfounded. Mickey is like a pinball sometimes. One second he’s beating the blood out of some unlucky gentleman, the next he’s philosophizing.
“Nothing,” I admit. “I think it was that Darvin guy, wasn’t it?”
Mickey’s grin is positively beaming now, like a little kid on Christmas morning. “Darwin, but close enough.”
“Okay…”
I want to go back to the apartment, take a shower, see Emily. I know Moira’s there, but it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon and I want to see how the ladies are getting along. I decide I won’t bother washing up in the bathroom. I’ll just get home as quickly as I can. But of course I have to let Mickey finish. If there’s one thing you never do in this life, it’s interrupt the man in charge.
“Survival of the fittest,” Mickey says.
“I’ve heard of that phrase,” I offer.
“It’s commonly misunderstood,” he lectures. That’s what he sounds like: a professor giving a lecture. “People misinterpret it to mean survival of the strongest, but that’s not what it means at all. Fit, in the biological sense, means a collection of genes and traits which are suitably adapted to their surroundings. For example, a chameleon, whose entire life is based around hiding, is fit. That’s interesting, I think.”
“Yes, sir.” When he starts talking, he can really get going, can’t he?
“You are suitably adapted to your surroundings, Jude. You’ve lived it. You’ve breathed it. You are the fittest, and that’s why you’ve got a bonus. Barry and his friends, they are not adapted, which is why they have to go.” He rubs his eyes. “I’m rambling, Jude. Forgive me. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately about the life, the nature of what we do.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, what I mean to say is, we’re suited to this. We’ve been doing it a long time. We know how the game is played. Barry didn’t. His friend, Patrick, doesn’t. My hope is that Patrick and his buddies take Barry’s death as exactly what it is: a proclamation that they are not, nor ever will be, the fittest. We are. Failing that, it will at the very least send a different message: we’re coming for you, so don’t get too comfortable.”
The blood has dried and stuck to my body now. I feel it peeling away from my skin.
Mickey rolls his eyes. “You can go, Jude,” he says.
“Thank you, sir.”
I go into the bar and make for the door. Tool touches my arm.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Did he give you the survival of the fittest speech?”
I laugh. “He’s given you the same one?”
Tool nods. “He bought a book about evolution a few weeks ago. How survival of the fittest applies to business management. He told me he regrets not reading more when he was younger.”
I leave the bar, chuckling to myself. You can be in this life for a year or a decade and it’ll never fail to surprise you. People think of us as monsters, but the truth is we’re just men like anybody else.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a comforting thought.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Emily
Moira emerges from the bedroom at around half past three. Her hair is messy and her eyes are wide and bloodshot. “Never sleep in the day.” She groans as she walks across the room, dragging her feet, and into the kitchen. She pours herself a glass of water and returns to me on the couch.
My nose is buried deep in the nursing book. I’ve gone from general housekeeping to assisting in advanced operations. I’ve learnt about hospice care, which sounds tragic but also somehow beautiful, to childcare and general nursing duties. When Moira sits next to me, I place the book on the table.
“Enjoying it?” she asks, but I can see by her bright eyes and her smile that she knows I am.
“It’s okay, nothing special,” I reply, years of being forced to hide my interests coming to play. I can’t even fool myself.
“Yeah, right.” Moira drains her glass of water and leans back on the couch. “When I came in here, you looked like a little kid, all excited because the next book in her favorite series was out.”
“I feel like my mind is electrified,” I tell her, wondering if I’m putting into words what I’m feeling. But that’s the only way I can think to describe it. It’s like my mind, stunted and ignored and battered for so long, has finally been set free.
“I know what you mean,” Moira assures me. “That’s how I felt when I first started. It’ll all the new knowledge. It makes sparks when it goes into your head.”
I giggle. “Is that the scientific explanation?”
“Don’t laugh at me, stupid girl!” Moira cackles, waggling her finger, doing an impersonation of some despotic matron on a hospital ward. She settles down. “I’m glad you like it. Do you think nursing is something you’d go into?”
Before I’ve even formulated an answer, I realize I’m nodding. Nodding eagerly, too, like it’s something that’s been building up my entire life.
“Wow, enthusiastic,” Moira says.
“Overenthusiastic?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“Whoever told you there was such a thing as too much enthusiasm?”
Patrick.
“Just . . . people.”
“Well, people can go to hell. Let me tell you something, Emily. There’s no such thing as too much enthusiasm for learning. I remember school, how the kids ridiculed the smart kids. A kid did well in a test, he was beaten and insulted because of it. Why do you think that is?” She barrels forward, pausing for a quarter-second before going on with her machine-gun speech. “It’s because the kids were jealous. They wanted to be smart, too. Maybe they knew they could’ve been smart if it were not for their desire to be popular—”
The apartment door opens and Jude walks in.
Moira and I turn.
Patrick, I think again, but this time I feel an old reflexive twinge in my chest. I remember watching once as Patrick got the crap beaten out of him by some of the older kids at the orphanage. It didn’t happen often, but even a mean huge man like Patrick struggled with five on one. I watched, backed against the wall, as they kicked and bit and punched him. This was years after he had started beating me. I remember thinking: I should be happy. He’s getting what he deserves. But I wasn’t happy. I was terrified. Hateful or not, evil or not, he was my brother . . . He is my brother, I think, staring at Jude, bathed in blood.
Moira shoots to her feet. “I have to go,” she says, facing away from Jude.
“Sorry, sis,” Jude mutters. “Slipped my mind about, you know—”
“About me not enjoying the sight of my brother covered in somebody else’s blood?”
Jude winces. “Yeah,
that.”
“Right. You know, Jude, for a man who saved my life, you sure are a piece of shit.”
“Ha, ha.” Jude steps aside. “I’ll see you later, sis.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Moira collects her things. She leaves one book on the table, the one I was reading. “You can keep this, hon.” Before she exits, she scrawls her cell number on a piece of paper, folds it up, and slips it into my pocket, all while I sit statue-still. “If you ever need to talk,” she says, and then leaves.
I don’t hear her. I don’t hear anything. My mind is spinning. The man I’ve given myself to, the man I very well might love, has just entered the apartment covered in my brother’s blood. Ha! Some twisted part of my mind cackles. What sort of joke is your life, Emily? You fall for a man, he shows you things about yourself you never knew, and now here you are, sitting on his couch when probably less than an hour ago he was killing your brother. What sort of sister are you? What sort of woman are you? He’s your brother, your family! Are you going to stand for this?