“I’m going to give you three seconds,” I tell him. “Usually I give ten, but I don’t reckon I want to talk with you that long.”
“If I told you anything, he’d kill me—”
“Three . . .”
“He’d kill me, he’d kill me!”
“Two . . .”
“He’d kill me, man!”
“What do you think I’m going to do!” I roar, standing up and looming over him. “You have nothing to gain by withholding this information, Carson. Nothing at all.”
“Wait . . .” Carson looks up, acid-chewed eye squinted and inquisitive. “You’re going to—to kill me no matter what?”
“You’ve raped children,” is my answer, the only answer I need to give. Does this bastard really think he can do what he’s done and just walk away?
“Then why should I tell you anything?”
I gesture with the Gatorade. “Take a guess.”
He swallows. I see it, a tennis ball of phlegm shifting down his throat, making his Adam’s apple jut out of his skin. “I hate Darius,” he says. “Of course I do. He did this to me. How couldn’t I? But do you know what I hate even more?” The boy-like mask drops from his face, and he sneers the next words. “Fucking heroes like you. You think you’re so much better than us, don’t you? Think you’re such a fuckin’ hero? How’s that, again? How the fuck does that work? We kill people—or help other people kill people—we get paid. You kill people, you get paid. How the fuck is that any different?”
“You can’t believe that,” I say.
But he does, I can tell. He believes it one-hundred percent.
I try one last time, with, “I’ve never raped a child, Carson.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Carson shrugs as much as the bindings will let him. “You ought to try it some time.”
I drop the Gatorade bottle, walk around to the trunk of the car, grab my pistol, and return to him. Laying the barrel against his head, I growl, “Why are you always so fuckin’ perverted? Why can’t you just be killers, or arms-dealers? Why has there always got to be some fuckin’ problem with you in there.” I jab his forehead with the pistol.
Carson closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “We do what we want, Roman. We’re free. Can you say the same?”
“I do what I want, too,” I say. “For example, I want to blow your brains out.”
I pull the trigger, sending his brains flying out of his skull, toppling the chair. I sigh as he lies there, limp and releasing his bowels, sending his stink up into the air. It’s been the same with every man who’s worked for Darius. Darius has been careful in choosing who he works with, it seems, making sure they are as depraved as him, making sure they have some dark inner place he can tap into and use, making sure they enjoy the evils of the world. I don’t really want to give a man like this a burial, but I’m a professional and I’ve made a mess.
When the cleanup is done, it’s early morning and the sun is beginning to rise. I strip down in the early morning sunlight and wash myself with bottled water, burn the clothes I was wearing, and then climb behind the wheel of the pick-up in fresh clothes. I make my way over the mountain toward the city. As I drive, I grip the steering wheel, staring at my white knuckles, thinking over all the bullshit I’ve been through these past six months, all the dead-ends I’ve been met with at all turns. It doesn’t help that Boss has abandoned me to my own devices, that I’m out here on my own now. The wild fuckin’ west, with no sheriff and no marshal and no backup, just me against an international arms dealer. It sounds like a joke when I think on it like this.
Once I’ve rejoined the road, I drive toward Lily’s apartment building. This pains me, too. All I want to do right now is park the pick-up proudly outside her building, walk up the stairs, and hold her in my arms. I’ve watched that bump of hers grow over the months with a longing in my body stronger than any I’ve ever felt, a primordial longing, the longing of a wolf wanting to protect his family. I want to run my hand over that bump and argue with her about baby names. Me, wanting to argue with a woman about baby names . . . it’s ridiculous, except that it isn’t, not anymore. I still don’t know if I’d be any good as a father, but I know at least I could make Lily feel less alone.
I park down the street, watching as the early-morning workers in their overalls and suits and pencil skirts climb behind the wheels of their cars and get ready for another day. I watch as a few drunks stumble into Lily’s apartment building, and resist the urge to charge after them. I want to grab them by the shoulder, spin them around, scream in their faces: “What business do you have living in the same building as the mother of my child?” I glance in my rear-view down the street, out the front window past Lily’s apartment, wondering if it would truly be that dangerous to reveal myself to her. What are the chances, really, that somebody is watching me?
I let that question hang in my mind, going over the possibilities, and decide that I really can’t know. And the fact that I can’t know is a problem. I should be able to know. I’m an expert at following people and usually I’m confident in my ability to recognize when I’m being followed. But not with Darius. I admit to myself, alone here in the pick-up with my woman somewhere in that graffiti-covered building a million miles away, that Darius might be better at this than me. Darius might be more well-trained than me. Darius might be more lethal than me. The admission causes me to punch down on the steering wheel, bruising my fist.
I have to leave Carson soon. My next lead is back in Vegas. Not a strong lead, but a lead nonetheless. Soon I’ll have to leave Lily, and the baby. Maybe when I come back she won’t be leaving the apartment with a belly the size of a beach ball; maybe she’ll be holding a child in her arms. She’ll have to sort out pushchairs and cots and all that shit herself. The thought of her struggling to put together a flat-packed cot makes me feel like the biggest prick who’s ever lived.
“Time to go,” I mutter, taking my hand from the wheel and turning the key in the ignition.
Chapter Twenty
Lily
I wake early, when it’s still dark, as I often do. Dreams plague me and rob me of sleep. Even when I do manage to drift off, I see Carol in my mind, but not as she was when I knew her. I don’t see my double. I don’t see my Watson. I don’t see a smiling woman thrusting a cocktail at me and demanding that I must drink it. I don’t see a woman full of life with a new boyfriend every couple of months. Instead, I see a woman covered in blood and mutilated in every sick way imaginable. I see a crimson pattern spread across her walls. I see a Pollock of pain staining her carpets, reds and browns. And in the dark recesses of my dreams, I see her jaw wrenched away from her head at an unnatural angle. I wake, shivering, gasping, clawing at the sheets as though I can wrench myself away from the sick reality.
I climb to my feet and go into the living room, my joints stiff with the heaviness of my body. Bump is kicking up a storm this morning. I wonder if he can sense my dreams, sense the horror of them. I hope not. I get myself a glass of milk, drink it down in one gulp, and then pour another and drink that, too. Through the thin apartment walls, I can hear drunks returning for sleep. They do this every morning, stumbling and singing through the apartment building, collapsing into walls. Sometimes, one of the other tenants will shout at them to be quiet. This only causes the drunks to sing louder, to laugh with more bitterness. I ignore them and go to the couch, take my secondhand, barely-working laptop from the coffee table and boot it up.
For half a year, I have resisted the urge to look at my work email. For half a year, I have refused temptation because I knew that Carol would have emailed me at least a few times, asking where I am. For half a year, I have been unwilling to face the pain of it. Words from the dead are not easily faced, especially since I was so close with the woman whose words undoubtedly sit in my inbox. I have avoided it because I just can’t bear the thought of Carol, my only real friend, being dead. Dead. Final. Curtains drawn. Hopeless. Perhaps in some way I could trick myself into believing
she was alive if I did not check the email. Ridiculous; the funeral has long passed, and Carol is in the ground. But nobody ever said that grief made sense.
When the laptop has finally booted up, I go to the internet browser and open the email login page. My fingers trail over the keys: old keys, secondhand keys, with myriad stains and quirks, the o and the p always snagging and having to be pressed extra hard. I’m surprised by how difficult this is. In the abstract, at least, I am surprised . . . how difficult can it be to open an email account? But I’m Betty Baker now. Betty Baker does not have a work email. Betty Baker never even knew a woman called Carol Cooley. Here, at my fingertips, the two lives I have been living have the potential to collide. Here, where I sit with bleached blonde hair and a possibly fatherless child in my belly, I could become Lily Fields again, if only for an instant.
Swallowing a mass of nerves, I type in my details.
The first few emails are as expected:
Where are you, hon?
I went by your apartment and you weren’t there!
I’ve filed a police report, but they don’t seem to be taking it very seriously. Please, just email me!
I’m getting worried now!!!!!!!!!
Then there’s a break in the emails for a few days. I look at the dates. Late August, early September, which means that around this time Roman and I were living in the suburban house together. It’s bizarre to think that Carol went to the police and reported me missing and I was less than an hour’s drive away and yet they couldn’t find me. But then I remind myself of how Darius cleared out the hospital wing, the two police officers pounding bullets into our temporary home, and my surprise fades. When the emails resume, they are increasingly frantic and strange, as though Carol was losing her mind toward the end. She sent me several emails, and as I read them I sit up, biting my fingernails, staring in awe and confusion at the screen, the occasional tear sliding hot down my cheek.
Okay, so I don’t even know why I’m writing you. I split up with my boyfriend, okay, Lily? God, I wish you were here . . . okay, okay, so I split up with my boyfriend a few days ago. He said he couldn’t take how ‘overly emotional’ I was being about you being missing. Asshole. Anyway, so today when I came home from my shift, there was a guy standing across the street. Just standing there. In shadow. I couldn’t see him. But he really freaked me out. So I called the police, but when they got here, he was gone. They’re being really short with me. The police are. I think I’m starting to me known as ‘that woman’ around the office. They don’t take me seriously. I hope I’m not going mad.
I found a note in my locker today, Lily! Oh, fucking hell! Fucking hell! Nobody around here is listening to me. I told Sissy Sanders and do you think she cared? I’m getting really scared. I wish you were here. I’ve contacted the police again, showed them the note . . . nothing. It’s freaking me the hell out. The note was right there and they just shrugged and told me that anybody could have slipped a note into my locker through the cracks near the edges. Oh, by the way, this is what the note said: Nice red dress, sexy. I was wearing a red dress the night before when I came in!!!!!!!!! Lily, where are you? You’re the only one I can talk to. I know you’d believe me. Oh, Lily, where are you!!!!!
I’m sitting at my window now and looking down and I swear I swear to you there is a man standing right down there and I’m going to call the police and I called the police and nothing came of it. They sent a squad car round and do you know what the man said he said to me, You need to stop wasting police time. He really said that to me. I don’t think I’m going mad I really don’t but this is getting too much. The note was real. It was. I still have it. And I’ve seen the man standing just standing and watching me like some kind of weirdo. Maybe I should see a shrink.
Okay! I’ve decided I’m not going to let whoever that is bother me anymore! I’m done with being scared! Done with it! If I put good energy out into the universe, good energy will come back to me! So you’re in the Bahamas drinking cocktails and that man is just some strange man standing outside an apartment building! Nothing to worry about!
I am scared so scared scared so scared scared so scared scared so so so so help me come back Lily come back please help me please come back I am so scared I have no one else to turn to nobody cares nobody cares nobody cares
Please disregard last!
Okay, so something happened today and I need to make sure I tell somebody or I think my head is going to implode. I was leaving my apartment building for my shift when I saw the man across the street. This is strange because usually the man doesn’t stay there when I come down usually he runs away. I knew I should’ve just walked away and pretended he wasn’t there but I was so angry. (You remember when Sissy shouted at me in front of all the other nurses? I was even angrier than that!) So I marched across the street and pointed my finger at him and screamed, Leave me the hell alone you fucking freak! His response terrified me. He just folded his arms, smiled, and stared at me. Just stared right at me. Jesus fucking Christ I think I’ll see that stare for the rest of my life. Lily, I have to give you his description. I have to. I need someone to know what he looks like, just in case—Just in case! Okay, so he is tall and muscular, really muscular, like one of those bodybuilders, with big arms. He has a slightly crooked nose and his hair is a goldeny brown color, sort of like a lion’s hair. And it’s cut really short. Um . . . oh, yeah, his tattoo. He has a tattoo on his arm, of that Chinese symbol thingy, you know the one, let me look it up. He has a tattoo of yin-and-yang on his arm. The way his arms were folded, I could see his hands. His pinky finger was missing. So you know now. So if anything happens to me—if! His eyes were really weird, too, like blue but too blue, almost like he was wearing fancy dress contact lenses or something. Almost white. Freaky. So I just got the hell out of there. I feel better, telling someone, even if you’re not here with me. P.S. please come back.
The more I read, the more I shake until I have to run into the bathroom and vomit into the bowl. As I kneel there, sick dripping down my chin, I think over everything I’ve read, especially that last bit. That was Roman she was describing. That was Roman, except . . . Roman doesn’t have a pinky finger missing, and Roman had no reason to stalk Carol, to kill Carol. Roman would never have done that. And Carol mentioned his eyes, too blue, contact lenses. I keel over, vomit again, Bump going crazy, kicking madly, as though he too is in shock about what I’ve read.
The idea sounds so silly I almost can’t let myself think it. But if I have ever thought to call myself Nurse Sherlock, I need to live by his words. I whisper to myself: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Standing up and splashing water in my face, I go over the details. A man was stalking Carol, a man the police were seemingly reluctant to investigate, Carol finally confronted this man and he looked exactly like Roman, right down to the hair color and the yin-and-yang tattoo, but he went too far. He made his eyes too blue, bought the wrong contacts, and he couldn’t hide his missing pinky finger. I think back to those phone calls of Roman’s I overheard. Once, perhaps . . . yes, I think he mentioned a pinky finger. Or am I misremembering that? It doesn’t matter, because I have to confront this idea. It’s silly, but . . .
I say it aloud, as though that will mitigate its effects.
“Darius Taggart has undergone plastic surgery to look like Roman, which explains why Roman has had such a difficult time tracking him. Perhaps this is Darius’ sick idea of a joke. A man known as the Acid Man would certainly find some depraved pleasure in something like this.” I repeat it all to myself, twice, head reeling, wishing I’d checked that work email months ago. I think back over my time here, the humiliating OBGYN appointments, the bullshit I’ve had to put up with from Markus at work, and how if I had checked my email and told Roman earlier, I could have avoided it all. He would’ve caught Darius, and we would be together right now.
I need to tell Roman. I go into my bedroom and begin to get dressed for work. Desp
ite the bombshell revelation, I still need to get ready for work. Time marches on despite my preferences. I need Roman. I need to get to him. I need to contact him in some way. The problem is, I have no way of doing that. When he left me at that diner, he left me without any details. And there’s the other possibility—I swallow painfully, terror gripping me, as I apply my makeup—that he might be dead, that Darius, Roman’s double as Carol was mine, might have found and killed him the second he left that diner.
“Fuck,” I mutter, as I lock my apartment door. “Roman, I need you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Lily
As I leave my apartment building, I look up and down the street, feeling paranoid and desperate at the same time: paranoid that Darius might be lurking somewhere and desperate to miraculously see Roman appear. Both are unlikely; it’s just Carol’s emails, giving me the spooks. I walk down the street toward my car, going over the emails in my head and wondering how in the hell I can get hold of Roman, as long as he is alive . . . Stop it, I tell myself, just stop it. Of course he is alive. He is Roman. Roman doesn’t die, ever. I wish he’d given me his phone number, or an email, or a goddamn forwarding address. Something. Having this information and not being able to tell him is infuriating. Perhaps he’s roaming across the States on some weak lead right now, perhaps he’s wasting his time when I have vital information.
HITMAN’S SURPRISE BABY: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 14