Identical my ass. Oh...right. But no matter. We were not psychically entwined. I could have turned cartwheels.
Todd waited and I could hear a tinny ringing from his phone. An equally tinny voice burbled like a squeeze toy at the other end.
"Hey, it's Todd." My brother winced as she responded. "Wait! Wait! That's not true! Not literally." He allowed another squall of words to pass, then said, "Okay, it's literally true, but you know how deceptive appearances are. Listen—don't hang up! I have a favor to ask. It'll only cost you a few minutes." He was interrupted for a brief lecture on cell phone economics. "Really? You have to pay if I call you? I have to pay, too? That sucks. Anyway, could you stay on the line a little bit? I'm kinda involved in a hairy situation, and I just want someone to listen in. If you hear shots or screams—" Pause. "Well, I guess I would be the one screaming. And if you hear something like that, call the cops." Pause. "Where?" Todd looked at me. I gave him my address—the dickhead couldn't read the number on the house, it seemed—and he repeated it into the phone. When done, he listened, then frowned. "What do you mean, it sounds like I'm talking to myself? No, it's just some guy going in with me. Okay? We're going in, now. You understand what to do, right?"
Todd's nose wrinkled prunishly as he followed me up the porch steps.
"What, you think it stinks here?" I demanded.
"You're used to it," he said. "Christ, this is like in the old Army, when they threw recruits into a room filled with onion gas and made them take off their oxygen masks."
"What do you know about the Army?" I asked. "And I think it was tear gas."
"What do you know about the Army?"
"I'm being all that I can be," I paraphrased eloquently. "Your house didn't exactly smell like a rose garden."
We had fallen into sync, as though we had been bickering for years. If either of us had had any common sense, we would have shut up.
Todd did not protest when I entered first. He seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of making me the primary target. This would have opened the opportunity for me to dash ahead and hide anything that I didn't want him to see, had that not encompassed everything from smutty magazines to a door mat buried under a lifetime of shoe grime. There was just too much to remove from sight on short notice and I kicked myself for inviting my lesser self beyond my doorsill.
All this I put aside as I patted down the quills on my scalp. This open-door business spooked my sense of decorum. It was bad enough having Jeremy stroll in—and thank God I had not been stroking myself when he did. Although, come to think of it, it wouldn't have been the first time. Jeremy's venomous toolkit included blackmail, and he had often threatened to tell Skunk he had caught me whacking off in the john. Even if he had not actually seen me, he could tell by my attitude when I had been up to no good and armtwist my guilt. Skunk's reaction would have probably been roundhouse indifference, but you never knew with him. Even his laughter could be crushing.
"Well?" Todd hissed as I paused at the door.
I signaled him to shut up. It was my head going through the noose first. No need to alert the hangmen. Having seen Joe Dog in action, I knew my reflexes needed every advantage I could suck out of my sagging muscles. Slowly, I peeked around the corner. No one.
"Is she still there?" I whispered.
Todd murmured into his cell phone, waited for an answer, and nodded. I went inside.
I knew pretty much where the vital ingredients to existence lay in my house. The TV remote, the refrigerator, the toilet. Everything else required second and third thought and usually a prolonged search. So it took me a moment to realize the trash had been trashed. The couch cushions had been tossed on the floor, Mom's old photos ripped off the walls and the threadbare carpets thrown up, exposing embarrassing mounds of unvacuumed dust. Even the ashtrays had been spilled, as if the intruders expected to find diamonds hidden among the butts. Part of the dining room's mountain of junk had been pulled down, leaving a detritus of broken tools and appliances.
"Is this how you take care of your property?" Todd snarled.
"Shhhh!"
There was no one else on the first floor.
"I smell smoke," said Todd.
I looked at him, then sniffed. He was right. There was a hint of smoke, or something like it, something a little more acrid. I didn't think Carl and Joe Dog would take it into their heads to burn down my house, but intestinal logic could have lead them down the path of most resistance. Burn it all down and sift the ashes for the theoretical fireproof safe.
Todd lifted his eyes upward. I listened for the telltale pops and moans of overage floorboards above my head. If the two were upstairs, the perfect silence told me they were remaining perfectly still. If one of them so much as leaned forward a high-pitched squeak from the old pine would betray them. But the only option was to take to the stairs, if for no other reason than to assess further damage. Not that any insurance company would fork over for rank vandalism of a house that was, by definition, already vandalized. Besides, homeowner's insurance was one of those frivolous expenditures I had forgone long ago.
We were halfway up when Todd let out a long, low, "F-u-u-u-c-k..."
I was so accustomed to ignoring stains in my house that I had not noticed the red smear on the faded runner starting at the third step from the top.
"F-u-u-u-c-k..." Todd repeated. When I shot him a dark look, he added, "B-l-o-o-o-d..."
"Either get a job in the funhouse or shut the fuck up," I said, propping my fist near his nose.
He looked ready to fill out an application at the nearest carnival, but to my surprise did not bolt down and out. Our ghoulish curiosity was tweaking us onward—evidence enough that two identical halfwits don't necessarily add up to a complete brain. The silence had almost convinced me there was no one upstairs—no one alive. But Joe in the guise of Dog had planted himself very nicely in my bedroom closet without me being the wiser, so the rotting floorboards weren't conclusive.
Advancing another step, I froze when I saw the bottom of a sneaker jutting toe-up beyond the corner of the wall, close enough that I could read the jagged writing on the treads:
"Property of ReMoarse Stage Rentals."
Joe Dog was in costume. He must have won the coveted role at the dinner theater and was already dressed for his performance. Easing near the top of the stairs, I could see he was in no shape to meet the curtain call.
"What is it?" Todd said when I let out an involuntary gasp.
"Dog, dead between the eyes."
He gave me a 'say what?' look and nudged me forward so he could come up and see for himself. It's a commentary on the McPherson blood that neither of us was put out by the sight of a man with a bullet hole in his forehead. Our ancestors had slain Yankees by the score, building up a morbid immunity to corpses. Or maybe it was just too much TV. Either way, neither Todd nor I flinched on seeing Joe Dog stretched out like a pizza dropped out of a moving car. My initial gasp had been one of surprise, not horror. The little actor had been tough as nails. But seeing him like that, with his blank open eyes—more Dog than Joe—I was forced to wonder if it had all been an act, that he had been a softie, after all.
"The gun," Todd observed.
It was a toss-up if Joe Dog had died game, or like game. He had had an actor's reflexes, able to leap, kowtow, bombast and bark all in a single take. Whoever had shot him had taken him totally by surprise, but he had still managed to get his gun halfway out of his waistband. I was a little sorry to see him taken down this way. He should have gone out in a blaze of glory, in a beach party frenzy hosted by a rabid wolfpack. He certainly should not have been killed in my humble abode.
The same went for Carl, whose body was slopped backward onto my bed. The shooter was a real marksman, having poked a hole in the bar owner's brain identical to the one in Joe Dog's. His open eyes were stunned, as though he had spent the last fraction of his life wondering how he could have been caught so flatfooted. I was wondering the same thing, and looked towar
ds my closet. The door was standing open.
"The shooter jumped out, popped Carl, and when Dog came running he pointed out the bedroom door and popped him, too."
I was disgusted by Todd's self-satisfied recitation, as if he was a card-carrying staffer of CSI. He didn't seem to really appreciate the gore of the moment. He only wanted to look cool. I shook my head.
"If Carl was shot first, Joe Dog would have had time to draw his gun. I think—"
Todd leaped to the conclusion I was aiming at, which I hadn't reached myself until I began to say it. We locked eyes for a moment, then swiveled slowly.
"Two shooters," he whispered.
"The Congreve brothers," I concluded. "How long ago do you think—?"
"Not long," Todd said. "I smelled something burning, remember?"
"Gunpowder," I concluded, my tense neck muscles tightening my voice into a squeak.
In death, Carl maintained the sour smirk that had brought so much joy to the world. It seemed like professional commentary on chumps of all stripes, including those who clearly spotted a noose and proceeded to put their heads into it. It was appropriate that he had died in bed. He had not died in the saddle, struggling for one last thrust before the Reaper interrupted his orgasm, but the ambience was equally disreputable.
I knew Todd's odd expression of churlish fear was reflected on my own face and fought down an impulse to slug myself. We stood stock still, listening. As I recalled, the Congreves were a noisy pair, more likely to blindly storm the enemy trenches than patiently watch for a proper ambush—hence the relative ease of their capture after the Brinks job.
If I needed to bandy exceptions to the rules between my left and right hemispheres, a ready example was the loathsome Jeremy, who had slipped out of character like a chain off a spoke. One day tough as nails, the next soft as taffy. A computer illiterate and then, voila!, a reasonable facsimile of a wiz. That was why I had bought into the Jeremy-as-twin scenario, and that little uncertainty was still playing bolo at the back of my mind.
"You think you might stop daydreaming long enough to get out of here?" Todd said irritably. The fact that it had taken him so long to bring this up suggested he had been daydreaming, too. About what, I wondered? And how could both of us go into Mute mode with a couple of stiffs underfoot and their killers, if not actually in the house, in the vicinity of it.
I was backing away when I saw the paper. Carl's tartan sports jacket had flung open when he fell backwards. The paper was jutting out of the inside pocket. Was this what had brought him to my house?
Todd made an 'ick' sound as I leaned over the body. I suspected he was more familiar with the dead man's cooties than I was, since he had succeeded in sharing Monique with him, whereas I had only an interrupted lap dance. I was a little concerned that Carl would come back to life and grab my arm, but I didn't let on. Drawing the paper out, I allowed a low cluck of disappointment.
"The will," I said.
"Whose will?" Todd asked.
"Benjamin Neerson's. He must have gotten it out of..." I paused. I had hidden my copy at Flint Dementis' house. That should have been guarantee enough that no one else would find it, but Carl had discovered the plum. Were the old man and his fossil mom all right? Or had the Congreves cut short their run in the Methuselah Marathon?
"How did you get a hold of it?" asked Todd grimly.
I didn't care to answer, and couldn't in any case. Not enough time. Because at that moment we heard a noise downstairs. It was only a creak. Everything in this house creaked, and it could have been some boards letting off steam. Could we take that chance?
"Dog's gun," Todd mewed like a lost kitten.
"What about it?"
"Get it!"
"Get it yourself!"
There you have it. We had brains, after all. We had sense enough to know that a gun in our hands was as dangerous to ourselves as it would be to anyone we aimed at. But it was obvious negotiation was out of the question. I walked as quietly as I could into the hallway and slid Dog's gun the rest of the way out of his waistband, giving the dead thespian an apologetic moue for delving into his pants.
"Faggot," Todd snickered. I held up the gun and he took a step backward. "Careful!"
"Isn't there a safety or something on this?" I studied the gun closely. There was a small button on the side. Was it the safety? Was it on or off? I didn't think Dog would be so dumb as to keep a live gun pointed at his family jewels. I pressed the button. The magazine dropped out and banged loudly on the floor.
"Why'd you do that?" Todd hissed fitfully.
I didn't waste time making excuses for my ignorance, but took up the magazine and gingerly pushed it back into the handle.
Now what? Was there a bullet in the chamber? Should I cock something? A simple mechanism could become incomprehensibly complicated the moment you realized its deadly potential. A knife was perfectly straightforward—until you decided to stab someone with it. How should you hold it? Overhand or under? Like a short sword or a stick? The gun seemed to suddenly acquire a thousand moving parts, including a grip that glued itself to my palm. I wanted to shake it off but was afraid it would explode if it hit the floor.
"What are you doing?" said Todd, deeply worried. "All you have to do is point it. I mean, point it somewhere else."
I leaned over and gently placed the gun on the floor. "You take it."
"Get out of here." Todd crossed his arms.
"All you have to do is point it," I smirked.
"Whoever's holding that will take the first bullet," Todd said bluntly, shoving his reasoning in my face. It gratified me to think that he was not looking after my health. That would be too brotherly. On the other hand, Jeremy would have been the first to plant me in front of a firing squad. Sibling economics was squishy that way, love 'em and shoot 'em, just like Wall Street.
"Which one of us is oldest, I wonder," I said.
"You mean minute-wise?" Todd's lip twisted. "Are you trying to pull an 'age before beauty' on me?"
Our banter had a mean edge. We were frightened, sure enough. But we also didn't like each other—which under the circumstances translated into self-loathing.
"I think our best bet..." I began, but stopped when a half-dozen ideas dead-ended on me.
"We should run like hell and not look back," Todd concluded.
"And if the Congreve brothers are at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for us?" I pointed out.
Todd went over to the bedroom window and studied the drop. "Just enough to break your leg," he murmured.
"If anyone's down there, they know we're up here," I said after listening to the floorboards creek loudly under Todd's tread.
Todd turned and stared at Carl, who seemed a lot more gruesome now that there was a prospect we'd be joining him.
"So these Congreve guys, who are they exactly?" he asked. "You think we can make a deal with them?"
"They stole the Brinks money and Skunk stole it from them. They were scared shitless of him, but now that he's dead they've grown a new set of balls."
Only after I said it did I realize how much I had depended on my father to keep the bad world at bay. He was a bastard, and anyone who chummed up to him became his slave. Yet that nastiness had uses I was unaware of, until now.
The Congreve brothers were only the first in a line of outsiders who refused to let well enough alone, whose sole purpose in life was to pick bones and contend every jot and lick. You know them. They're omnipresent. Tax collectors, stupid neighbors, prickly cops, census takers, lawyers, non-profit charities, kids. I just couldn't get enough of not having them in my life, and in the past they had been met at every turn by the scowling face of Skunk McPherson, who could put off the Devil with a glance. The cops had his number, of course, but they wouldn't tackle him without plenty of backup. Skunk, my oppressor, had been my savior, too. It was a startling discovery. Going on the assumption that I did not share Todd's look of perpetual constipation, I wondered if I had not been the one to luck out, afte
r all.
"Hello?" a voice called from downstairs.
Todd and I shared a jump of surprise, then tiptoed to the bedroom door.
"Four have gone in and none have come out," the voice rose. "I'm starting to wonder..."
Todd and I exchanged glances. The guy didn't sound like a killer. But neither had Dog, in Joe Dog mode.
"If you think the Brinks money is up there, think again. Mute knows better."
I winced.
"Mute?" Todd whispered. "Is that a nickname or slang? I can never tell anymore."
"He must be talking about Dog," I suggested.
Seeing that, in his L'il Abner role, Joe Dog had limited dialog, Todd accepted this with a nod. "Then this isn't who shot them," he concluded.
He was basing his premise on my invention, but I found it somehow comforting. We can convince ourselves on the flimsiest evidence, especially when that evidence is founded on our own lies. I'm not sure I see anything particularly wrong with that. So I leaned over poor dead Dog and peeked around the wall. I drew back suddenly.
"What?" Todd asked, gripping my arm.
"I never saw him before," I said.
Todd squeezed past me and looked. "Me neither," he said after a brief glance.
"Yes, you've seen me, now," said the man. "Both of you have, I think. If you don't trust me, send down Carl or Dog. They're not afraid of anything."
"Not anymore they aren't." I was speaking in a low voice, but the stranger had good ears.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded. "What the hell is going on up there?"
"You tell us," said Todd, surprisingly inclusive.
"You're the ones already up there. Why don't you...forget it." With that, he began ascending the stairs. My glimpse of him told me he was middle aged, and not exactly a retired athlete. He was only halfway up when he began huffing. Todd and I backed away and looked down at the gun I had rested on the floor. I nudged it against Joe Dog with my foot, putting incrimination where it belonged.
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