BAD BOY’S SURPRISE BABY

by Kathryn Thomas

Bump kicks madly throughout the night, as though he, too, feels the desperation which flares constantly within my chest. He . . . Roman may never know that he has a son. I close my eyes, wondering if our son will have Roman’s wolf-blue eyes or my hazel-browns, wondering if he’ll be tough and strong like Roman or small and frail like me, wondering if these questions have any meaning to a woman named Betty Baker.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Roman

  Six months, six goddamned months, six blind, useless, fuckin’ wasted months . . . I lean down and growl in the man’s face, growl like a true madman. He leans back, making a whining noise, almost falling off his chair. For the last three of those six months I’ve been right here, Carson City, which means I’ve been able to keep an eye on Lily . . . but that does little to calm my anger. I haven’t been able to talk to her, ’cause I don’t know if some bastard is following me or not. Even when I’m staking out her apartment, I have to park up the fucking street and watch the entrance, so if anyone is watching me, they have no clue what building I’m staking out. Six months . . . anger boils within me and I backhand the man across the jaw.

  His name is Carson, Carson of Carson as he’s known, and it’s rumored that he was right-hand to Darius until recently. He’s short, wide-shouldered, thickly muscled, with a face which is one half scarred, acid-stained flesh and the other patchy black beard. After I hit him, I sit him upright, grabbing him by the shoulders.

  “You’ve clearly had a run in with the Acid Man,” I say, nodding at his face.

  My voice echoes around the hillside, but nobody will interrupt us. We’re in the middle of nowhere, one of those stretches of rock on Kit Carson nobody’ll be scouting out at three in the morning. I’ve got the headlamps of my car on, lighting up Carson, bloody-faced, bound to the rickety wooden chair.

  “I told you, man . . .”

  “You haven’t told me shit.” I growl, and hit him again.

  My patience wore out months ago. My patience wore out when Boss lost his re-election and was kicked out of office, and so had no use for me anymore. My patience wore out when, after months of searching, I still don’t know anything except that Darius is missing a pinky finger, which is a useless piece of information. My patience wore out when, for these past months, I’ve watched the mother of my child grow from afar and haven’t been able to touch her.

  Carson sputters blood, coughs, and lolls in the seat. I take my bottle of water and splash some in his face.

  “I know all about you, Carson,” I say, leaning forward, bringing my face close to his so he can see the rage in my eyes. “I know all about how you held those girls down in Uganda. I know all about how you liked to take the ones he was done with. You were his fuckin’ lackey up until less than a year ago. You must know something. You must. You rapist fuck.”

  I make to hit him again, but then stop myself. I can’t let anger take me. If I keep hitting him, I might kill him, and then my only lead will disappear.

  “Let me tell you something,” I say. “I’m in this for myself now. I’m not getting paid for this. If you’ve heard of me—and if you worked with Darius, of course you fuckin’ have—then you know how seriously I’m taking this. So I’m going to ask you once more, and then I’m getting the acid. Tell me where he is, where he last was, what he’s up to these days. Fuckin’ give me something.”

  When I mention acid, he begins to shiver, rocking in the chair, vibrating against his bindings. But he clamps his mouth shut and doesn’t say a word.

  “Fine,” I mutter.

  I walk to my car, around to the trunk, making sure to do it slowly to draw it out for him. It doesn’t matter, ’cause no matter what he tells me, this man is dying tonight. Rapist, murderer, psychopath, thinking he can come to Carson as some kind of joke because it matches his name. No fuckin’ way. He’s a dead man. But he doesn’t know that. He still has hope.

  I take the bottle of Gatorade, label peeled away, from the trunk and return to Carson. When he sees it, be begins mumbling. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Come on, man. I don’t fucking know!”

  “Do you remember how it felt, Carson?” I ask, sitting on my haunches and looking up into his face. “Do you remember how your flesh sizzled?” I heft the bottle of Gatorade. “Do you really want to go another round with this stuff?”

  Carson of Carson literally chose this city because it happened to match his name. I learned from one of my contacts that after the Acid Man disfigured his face and he decided that he wanted to settle down, he decided on this place as a twisted joke. And so he fled here, with warped glee in his heart, thinking he’d gotten away with the rape and the torture and the murder of innocents. And now here I am, brandishing what he thinks is acid at his face. I see the effect it has on him, as though his layers of glee and safety are being peeled away with acidic efficiency. He turns from an evil, scary-looking rapist murderer to scared child. Perhaps the sort of change that’d provoke pity is some men.

  Not me.

  “Do you remember how it bubbled, Carson? Do you remember how it felt, knowing that your flesh was going to be eaten away once the bubbling had stopped? I bet that was the worst part, wasn’t it? Not the pain, but thinking about what was going to happen after it was all gone.”

  Carson shivers, his lips trembling, tears beading in his eyes. Perhaps another man—maybe even another killer—would feel a pang of conscience at this. Perhaps another man would feel that they had gone too far. But you have to remind yourself, when looking into the eyes of these devils, that they are master deceivers and experts at playing angels. He shivers now, but if I let him go, within the week he would be attacking some woman, causing someone pain.

  “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 s
ee 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.