by Paula Cox
But I like to be sure, which is why I found Jeff in a bar two weeks ago and bought him a drink, and another, and another, until he began to talk to me, talk about his bitch wife and how she never valued him or gave him what he needed; talk to me about his short blonde bitch of a wife who never did her wifely duties. She never even sucked it after the wedding night! he roared. She was a fucking slut, doing other men behind my back. Then he’d leaned in, swaying from how drunk he was, and he’d whispered to me about how he was going to do her, do her nice and proper. I’d laughed with him, stifling my emotions. I couldn’t kill him there, in the bar. It was too empty and it wasn’t one of my bars.
But here, tonight, it won’t be so hard.
I push past the people and tap Jeff on the shoulder. With a visible effort—as though he is dislodging his haze—he turns and faces me. I laugh, a fake laugh, and he laughs too. “It’s you,” he grunts, in his stupid slow drone of a voice.
“It’s me,” I say, and we both chuckle. “You’re a fan of the Nicks, then?”
“The Nicks rule, sure,” Jeff says. His lips spread into a snakelike grin, all gums. “But that’s not the only reason I’m here.” He stops for a moment. “You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Ross?” I’d told him I was Ross because taking risks is a big mistake. What if he’d mentioned Max Cato to somebody and discovered that Max Cato is an infamous boogeyman amongst men like him?
“Of course I am, buddy,” I say, and then I slap him on the back.
He nods to the dancers. Stella: short and blonde and bouncy, smiling widely as she waves her pom-poms. It’s a fake smile, of course. I can tell that just by looking at her. It’s the same smile I’m using now, forcing the muscles of my face to contract in a certain way, with absolutely no emotion behind it. But when she shakes, wiggles, it’s magic. My mind tries to stray, but I force it back on track. There will be enough time to fantasize about this woman later. Maybe I’ll even introduce myself when this business is done. Doubtful, I think. I’ve never been to prison because I don’t do stupid shit like that.
“That’s my ex-wife,” he says, his beads of eyes glinting. “And tonight’s the night.”
“Wow,” I say, and I say it as though I am impressed, as though this wife-beating psychopath is my best pal, and he grins. I lean in. “When are you going to . . .”
He reaches up and touches my shoulder. Great pals. I want to snap his hand at the wrist. “Half time,” he says. “I’m going to wait for her in the parking lot.”
“Good man,” I say.
In the bar, I’d told him that I was an ex-con who was recently released for murdering my wife. And the fool had eaten it up. Jeff is not a man to think about something he’s told. He is a man to strike a woman in the face and watch as the blood drips down her cheeks like tears, and laugh about it, and joke about it, and then, when the woman is lucky enough to escape, steal her life.
Killing him will feel good. Men who hurt women are no men at all.
“Maybe I should come with you?” I ask.
He should think: I don’t know this man. I just met him in a bar. And why is he here, sitting near me at the game? Surely that isn’t a coincidence. Surely he followed me. I can’t trust him. I shouldn’t do anything tonight. I should retreat, come up with another plan, lose this man’s trail.
But that’s how a logical person would think, and men like Jeff aren’t logical. They’re barely even human.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Jeff says.
“Roll on halftime, then,” I say.
***
The man is almost frothing at the mouth as we thread our way through the crowd toward the exit. We’re not the only ones doing this, but I’m sure we’re the only ones who are leaving for good. Everyone else is going to the toilet or to get some food. I find myself jealous as I leave. The game, as much as I’ve been able to watch it whilst bullshitting to Jeff, is a damn good one. If I wasn’t working, I know that my eyes would be glued to the court, and nothing would be able to unstick them. But work comes first, even before my amazement at a three-pointer scored milliseconds before the halftime buzzer sounds. I’ll watch the replays, I think reluctantly
Jeff and I emerge into the parking lot, filled with cars but completely empty of people. It’s like we’ve wandered onto the set of one of those zombie movies that seem to be everywhere these days. The world has ended, and Jeff and I are the only survivors. The thought makes me want to wretch. Just me and this ugly cruel man, wandering. Even if he was the only person alive other than me, even if he was my only chance at human contact, I’d still end the sadist.
He walks through the parking lot muttering under his breath, getting himself psyched up. There are some jobs where you have to worry about the body, but this isn’t one of them. Jeff’s a large man, the type of man who’s just waiting for a heart attack, and the needle in my pocket is just that: a heart attack. No one will question and far fewer will care. He’ll be found amid the screams of a startled onlooker and then he’ll be carted off to a coroner’s office and forgotten about forever. Another job done. Most importantly of all, Stella will never be any the wiser. As far as she’ll know, her psychopath ex-husband came to one of her games and died of a heart attack.
We’re about halfway across the parking lot when I hear, far back near the entrance, the sound of the cheerleaders emerging.
I have to act quick, but I don’t panic. In one smooth motion I take the needle out of my pocket, step forward, and pierce him in the arm.
He looks down, dumbstruck, face already going slack, and then I remove the needle and step away.
“You shouldn’t have hit a woman,” I say.
Then I turn, pocketing the needle, and jog away.
***
Who? Why? And they must’ve been so damn fast. Too damn fast. To move it in between the gap of me killing him and the cheerleaders emerging. What. The. Fuck.
I get the news when I’m sitting in my penthouse on the couch. The place is a bit of a mess, as it always is, but I never claimed to be a cleaner. Unless you count cleaning the streets of scumbags and woman-beaters and rapists and all the other filth that seems to haunt New York when the sun goes down.
I lean forward and turn up the volume on my plasma screen. The bottom of the screen is obstructed by empty beer cans, the coffee table radiates the smell of day-old pizza, and clothes are strewn across the floor between the couch and the TV.
But I can see well enough: see the reporter, and hear her.
“We have just had confirmation, Jack. The body was found in the trunk of a cheerleader’s car. The male, around twenty-five to thirty years old, heavyset, was found in the trunk of a cheerleader’s car earlier this evening by a Nicks’ fan who noticed a foot extending from the back of the car. The onlooker described the body as ‘jammed in there’.”
She was never meant to know, but even as the camera zooms in past the crowds and the police, I see that it is Stella’s car. They would’ve taken her for questioning, which isn’t a problem. She’s innocent of it all and she knows nothing. Plus, she has an alibi. There are cameras in the arena, the hallways, etc., and they’ll exonerate her.
But it’s not the police that causes my hands to clench into tight fists.
It’s whoever the hell this phantom is, this phantom which appeared from nowhere and moved the body in the space of half a minute, who must’ve been watching me the entire time and must’ve darted from the shadows the second Jeff fell.
I’m a predator; that’s how I think of myself. I lean back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling, a throaty groan escaping my lips. I’ve been outplayed, and now Stella is in danger. Whatever else this is, it’s an open declaration.
They’ve made her a part of this.
***
One thing you learn in this business is that very little happens by coincidence. The mafia, and even private clients, are big on messages. Sometimes you’ll have to arrange the scene in a certain way, or do the job with a certain tool, or record a sho
rt message before the grave is dug. Sometimes you’ll have to wait until a certain day or tell the target that they have so many days before the end. When some poor bastard pops up on TV with a finger in his mouth, it’s no random collection of meat; it was put there for a reason.
It’s the same with Jeff in Stella’s trunk. He wasn’t crammed in there without any thought. I lean forward, bracing my forearms on my knees, and try to plot my course. I need a plan. Stella might be in danger. That’s my first concern. If I’m in danger, so what? I’ve been in danger my whole life. I don’t particularly worry about danger anymore. If it comes, it comes. It will whirl around me like a giant wave and I’ll emerge, untouched, and the hurricane will be bleeding.
I laugh softly. That was one of my dad’s lines, I realize. The giant wave of violence. Goddamn, don’t become like him. Dad was a good worker, a good killer, but a bad man.
No—Stella is my worry.
The thing is, if I go around there shouting to her that she’s in danger, that any minute whoever could smash through her front door and strike her down, she’ll panic. And it will ruin her life. Even the trauma of thrusting that upon her will ruin her life. I think I’ll need something I’ve had little use of in my life: tact. Perhaps with a side of charm.
But is that just about the job, Max? Is that really just about the job? Isaac, now, Uncle, the Red Fist, the Ghoul of New York City, the man who raised me when Dad was too busy drinking himself half to death. Uncle Isaac, Red Fist, grinning at me from deep within my mind, eyes glinting above a thick black beard. Or do you like the look of this girl, eh? You can lie to yourself, boy, but you can’t lie to me.
I shake my head, shaking that thought away. She is attractive, sure, but it’s not about that—
Liar.
It’s not about that, I tell myself. It’s work, not pleasure; if I wanted pleasure I’d call up one of the bad girls, the ones whose skirts are perpetually around their asses, who wink and leer and jump on you because you’ve killed a man. Not a nice girl like Stella, a college girl, a girl with a life ahead of her that doesn’t involve killers—
Liar.
In my head, I punch Isaac across the face. He dissipates into black smoke, drifts away, his grinning smile the last thing to go.
“Maybe he’s right,” I mutter.
Then I jump to my feet and head for the door. Right or not, I need to do this. Charm her, calm her, and then ask her.
The problem is, for a man used to dealing with bad girls it can be a hell of a struggle to charm the good girl. I’ll follow my instincts, I decide, as I walk down the apartment stairwell. They’ve rarely failed me.
Chapter Three
Stella
When I leave the police station, I immediately spot the red Mustang. How old is he? Fifty? And he still drives that thing. I walk into the autumn night, a chill in the air causing my breath to frost like dragon’s breath around my face, and up to the Mustang. Then I climb in, not bothering to contain my sigh. The man who sits behind the wheel is what they call barrel-chested in the novels I sometimes read after studying. His belly is round, too; I believe the word is rotund. His fingers are chubby ring-squashed sausages. And his face is fat and mustachioed and full of the judgment I’ve run from since I was eight and Mom dropped dead; ever since Mom died and took with her some essential part of Dad.
“Stella,” he says.
“Dad,” I mutter.
The engine thrums gently and for a time we just sit there, side by side. I want him to drive away. In truth, I want to get out and call a taxi. But Dad will just cause a fuss. He’s the sort of man who’ll climb out of the car and start shouting, and then the police will come out, and he’ll start bragging about all his contacts, and . . . No, this is easier. Just wait it out. When he taps the steering wheel, his rings clink, clink, clink.
“So, what happened?”
“Nothing. Just questioned me. Found nothing. Easy.”
“Oh.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dad tilting his head at me. “So you’re not in trouble?”
“No, of course not. I didn’t do anything. They’re keeping the car for a while, though. Evidence.”
“Oh.”
I don’t turn and face him, because I know if I do I’d see judgment in his eyes. Maybe well-hidden, maybe not, but definitely there, blazing out like a brand, marking me. I remember when I was a teenager, fourteen, and I came in one night drunk. Not just drunk like adults get, but drunk in the way only a teenager whose mother has died can get, when vodka seems like elixir and you give no thought to how you’re going to walk home. I stumbled in, and he sprang from his armchair in the front room, loomed over me, and screamed for ten minutes straight. I didn’t even hear the words. What I remember most is curling into a tight ball and weeping and Dad just going on and on with his screaming.
“Are you taking me home?” I ask, when he doesn’t do anything.
“Yes,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
Jeff is dead, I think. Jeff is dead! Dad never hit me, not like Jeff, but he hit me with words. Slut, whore, bitch; your mother would be ashamed; get some self-respect.
Stop it, I tell myself. This isn’t helping anybody.
I try to go to my safe place, to the turnstile and the field and the dogs, but Dad clears his throat loudly.
“I’m here for you, you know,” he says.
“I know,” I say, just wanting him to be quiet. Memories fly through my mind, mostly shouting, sometimes talking in a mean low voice about how I’ll never amount to anything. Often, he was clutching a bottle of whisky when he berated me. Other times, it was a picture of Mom, the one where she’s skinny in a bathing suit, taken before I was born. Is that what you want to be? Some man’s fuck toy? Pathetic. And because I’d let my date walk me to the front door and given him a peck on the cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “If any of this has upset you, I mean.”
“I’m fine,” I reply.
I feel him probing me for an opening in my armor. I know what he wants me to do. I figured out Dad a long time ago. Dad doesn’t see himself as a judgmental, bad person. All those rants, he sees as for my benefit. He doesn’t imagine they broke me in any way. No—he was doing his part as a parent. So now he wants me to turn to him and cry into his chest and for him to be the one to make it all alright. I close myself off against him, securing my armor, and finally he pulls away from the parking lot and drives through the dimness of New York toward my apartment building.
“I want to make sure you’re okay,” he offers as we drive.
“It’s no big deal.”
“He was your ex-husband.”
“He was, and now he’s dead.” I want this to close the conversation. I don’t want to snap, to get angry. I don’t want to say anything mean.
“But still . . . doesn’t it upset you?”
“That the man who beat me and stole my self-respect and tried to steal my dreams is dead? Not really.”
Dad flinches. My words come out barbed, acidic. I swallow and force away the anger and the hate and focus instead on the road ahead of us. The lights stretch into the darkness a few yards ahead as Dad cruises through the streets. On my left is the sidewalk, where people walk to and fro, mostly young and many of them holding bottles of alcohol. One man stumbles into an alleyway, leans against the wall, and drops his trousers. Perhaps it says something that I’d rather watch that than have a conversation with Dad.
“So you’re happy, then?” he probes.
I sigh. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” he says. “Your happiness is always my main concern.”
I bite down. Retorts dance on the end of my tongue, tempting me to use them. But I force them away. He believes what he’s saying. He believes that when I went to him after the women’s refuges and he said, You should’ve come to me first, you idiot, that that was helpful. Holding a glass of whisky, eyes bloodshot: I’m your father. You married a stupid man, because you�
��re stupid, and on top of that you disrespect me by going to some lesbian refuge instead of your father. And the morning after, with the apologies. Oh, no, he won’t drink again.
Parents, I think. It’s too complicated.
He loves me, I know that, and yet . . .
I massage my forehead. I’m not getting anywhere and my head is starting to ache.
Finally, Dad pulls up outside my apartment building.
“You can talk to me, you know,” he says, when I make to jump from the car.
“Okay,” I say.
“Is that all?” His voice doesn’t darken, not openly. But I can hear darkness beneath his voice, as though a fine layer of it buoys up each one of his words, ready to consume it. “I’m trying here, Stella, really trying. What would you have me do? I’m trying.”