by Tia Lewis
She held up a clean T-shirt. I snatched it and pulled it over my head. It was my red T-shirt that had been stained with a mark’s blood a while back, but it was such a dark shade of red that you hardly noticed the crescent in it. I never liked throwing away T-shirts if I could help it. Shopping for clothes was so damned boring.
“And here,” she held up black boxer briefs and a pair of faded blue jeans with holes in them. I had never pulled on underwear quicker in my life. I forced my legs into the jeans so fast that my toes snagged on some of the holes, a quiet tearing noise filling the room as I shuffled into them.
She looked up at me with a shrug. “I didn’t bring spare boots, sorry.”
“I don’t think people are going to pay attention to my feet. Now, get dressed, quick.”
I found my leather jacket and boots and pulled them on, though they were flecked with blood, some of it old, some of it from this evening. They smelt as if they’d been dragged through a wet field, but they’d have to do. My face and hair were flecked with blood, but showering was out of the question now.
The sirens grew louder and louder, and my keen ears could tell they were about a block away, right near the Oriental Delight. Fucking Quick-Toes! In my mind I saw police officers leaning over Gunner, listening to the Chinese man wailing, and the little girl crying.
“I don’t know what came over you earlier,” Tess said as she slid the pink panties up her legs.
“Me?” I caught myself licking my lips tasting her feminine sweetness on my tongue. “It looked like you were having a hell of a time.”
She blushed as she pulled on a pair of black jeans.
“So… Did that mean anything to you at all?”
I paused.
“You want the truth?”
“Yeah. I can take it.”
“Yes, it did.” My eyes lit up with a smile. “It was goddamned amazing, baby. But that won’t mean a thing if Boss or Zharkov gets ahold of me—to us.”
She smiled.
“You know,” she cleared her throat. “I heard a story once about Zharkov kicking a five-year-old girl in the face. When her mother got angry, he took her into his car, and he violated her,” she paused. “All while the child waited outside, crying.”
I grimaced. I may be a tough bastard, but even I had a shade of soul.
“I heard that too, and I look forward to the day that I can put a bullet through his fucking head. Now hurry up.”
She pulled on a plain white T-shirt—not bothering with a bra—and then the baggy black hoodie. When she was done, she was still beautiful, but only because I knew what was underneath. If asked, passersby might describe her as a skinny girl, but not much else. She pulled the hood up, covering her long blond hair. Then she fell back to her knees and started stuffing things into the suitcase. Clothes, small hair clips, brushes, and items of makeup that I didn’t understand and had never seen before.
“What are you doing?” I asked, as she frantically pushed everything into the suitcase.
“We can’t leave anything behind,” she replied, not looking up. “Not anything that will let them know we were here.”
“Smart girl,” I nodded. I never would have missed something like that on the job. I had to focus, pretend like this was another day at the office, dot my I’s and cross my T’s.
“I know I’m right,” Tess playfully mocked.
“Pack everything,” I said. “Especially the painting. Where’s the locket?”
“Don’t worry. It’s in the suitcase.”
“Good,” I breathe a sigh of relief.
I went into the bathroom and looked beside the toilet. I remembered seeing something cleaning-related around here. I stuck my head beside the spider-web-ridden, dust-leaden gap and I saw an old bottle of bleach.
“It will have to do,” I muttered. I picked it up and tore the toilet paper from the dispenser on the wall.
I started in the bathroom, pouring bleach over everything and rubbing it down with toilet paper. It wasn’t ideal. Usually, if I had to clean up, I would use plastic sheets, disinfectant, and rubber gloves (not to mention industrial-strength garbage bags and a sharp knife,) but I had to work with what I had. I was glad the room was small. I wiped everywhere: inside the toilet and under the rim, inside the sink, around the taps, every part of the wall, and even the ceiling.
Then I moved into the bedroom. Tess stood by the door, suitcase at her feet, toeing the ground with her foot.
“Wanna make yourself useful?” I asked.
“That would be better than just standing here, I suppose.”
I unraveled half the roll of toilet paper and tossed it to her. I poured bleach all over the room, and it seeped into the carpet. I was about to pour it on the sheets when I shook my head.
“Take those off,” I said, pointing at the sheets. “Put them in the suitcase.”
“I don’t think there’s enough room. Plus, it might squash the painting.”
I bit my tongue. Arguing right now probably wasn’t the smartest idea. Any second the police—or worse, the Russians or Boss—could smash through that door.
“Just do it, Tess. Use the pillow case as a bag.”
She crouched down near the wall, scrubbing the baseboard. After she was finished, she dropped the toilet paper and stripped the passion and blood-stained bedding. She grabbed a pillow case and began stuffing the sheets inside. I soaked the bare mattress and pillows in bleach. It was unlikely that they’d send forensics to this place, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
I tossed the bleach into the bathroom and dropped the toilet paper onto the mattress.
“Let’s go.”
Tess nodded and together we headed for the door. I grabbed my pistols from the nearby table and holstered them inside my leather jacket. I lifted the suitcase, propping it on my shoulder. We walked onto the balcony and miraculously we weren’t bombarded with blue and red lights. The only person in our immediate vicinity was a woman of around forty or fifty-years-old. It was hard to tell because her fingernails were stained yellow, her skin was leathery, and half her teeth were missing. Add that to the skirt that revealed a glimpse of her dull purple underwear and her dyed pink hair, and you had a hell of a conundrum on your hands. She oozed cigarette smoke, the pungent smell of marijuana, and the acrid smell of harder drugs.
“Hello, handsome,” the woman winked at me and puckered her lips. “Looking for some late night company? Only twenty dollars, baby.”
“Come on, Liam. We have to go!”
The woman let out a haughty laugh as I took Tess’ arm and led her away. The woman continued to shout “Come back, sweet thing!” all the way until Tess and I were walking by the pool. She even leaned over the balcony, sucking on her cigarette butt, to watch the strange client and the humiliated hooker walk away. She took one last suck on the butt and then flicked it into the pool, where it floated toward the magic 8 ball.
The night was no less dark, warm, or quiet than when I had left for Chinese food. It felt like a long time had passed, but cars drove by with men in business suits, apparently coming home from work, and hookers made a steady procession toward the motel. Clients repeatedly turned into the parking lot, hats pulled down over their faces. As we quickly walked past the front office, the receptionist pushed open the broken automatic door.
“Checking out so soon, baby?” the woman flirted then glared at Tess. “And who the fuck is this little bitch? You didn’t have a guest up there, did you? That’s extra, you know. I never forget a face or a name!”
“Go to bloody hell!” Tess gave her the finger.
“Hey! Wait a minute!” She walked toward us, gesturing wildly. “I said get back here!”
But I had already taken Tess by the arm. I walked fast in the opposite direction of the Chinese restaurant and down the dimly lit streets.
“Aren’t you going to get rid of that thing?” Tess asked, waving her hand in front of me.
“What?” I flinched back realizing a buzzing fly was
attacking my face.
“It must really like you. I wouldn’t blame him,” she giggled.
“Oh, the fly? Nah, it only wants some dead man’s blood.”
“You’re an odd man, you know that?” she giggled again. She checked behind her to make sure the receptionist or anyone else wasn’t following us.
“I’m aware.”
“Well… We can be odd together then,” Tess smiled.
I bit my lip. Am I blushing? I thought.
“I would like that,” I smiled back. “Maybe one day, when all this is a distant memory we can visit a library, and you can point out some good book recommendations. If we live that long.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why not? You can be my private librarian.”
“We can do that,” she blushed at the implication. “Wait… How do you propose we make sure that we live that long?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” I grinned savagely at her, like a wild animal stalking its prey before dinner.
“I don’t even want to know.”
She paused as we continued to hurry down the road.
“Okay, what is it?”
“I finally have a plan.” I winked.
“Are you bloody crazy?”
“Keep your voice down.” I peered around the corner.
“Your plan is to steal a car?” Tess hissed, keeping her voice low.
We walked down an alley which reeked of exposed garbage. The smell grew worse the further we walked, but I kept walking with my hand firmly on Tess’s arm. Graffiti covered the walls, most of it written by addicts and hoodlums.
“Helloo,” Tess said, struggling not to gag as the smells grew fiercer. “I’m talking to you, Liam. You said ‘get a car.’ By ‘get’ you mean ‘steal’?”
“No. By ‘get’ I mean ‘get’...”
“Oh, bloody hell.”
The moon had risen high. It shone down in pale blue streams, giving me a little light to work with, but not much. Kevin and I had been down this alley before back when our father made a decision that changed our lives forever.
Don’t think about me, brother, I heard Kevin’s voice in my head. If you think about our dad, you’ll mess this whole thing up. You’ll get you and Tess killed. Just bury it. I know I’m not usually the sort of telling you to repress things, but when it comes to our dad, that’s all you can do.
For once, I took my brother’s advice.
“So, why do we need a car? Where are we going to go?”
“Upton.”
“Upton?”
I nodded as we passed graffiti which read: South Boston & Proud!
“Upton,” I confirmed, as we turned around the last corner, walking by ten or so rats gnawing at a discarded chicken wing. I stepped around the rats, and Tess kept looking behind us until we were out of the alley.
“So far, so good. I haven’t noticed anyone following us.”
“Good.”
We emerged onto a quiet street off of the main roads. Two of the eight streetlamps emitted a dim glow which barely reached the sidewalk. The other six either had no glass at all or shards of glass that clung to the post and glittered faintly in the moonlight. A lone dog wandered the streets, lifted its leg, urinated, and padded away. To our left, there was a small convenience store, but it was now closed. To our right there was a public basketball court, the benches defaced with chalk and the nets on the basketball hoops hung in tatters.
“You can’t steal from these people,” Tess whispered. “They’re poor. They need it.”
“It’s not stealing.”
I released Tess’s arm and paced across the street toward an old beat-up Mustang. I remembered when the paint had been black, but now it was so badly rusted that it looked orange, like it had been left too long in the sun. The front of the car was dented and scratched. I remembered hearing about the crash in the Drunk Harpy. The back window sported a long gouge from Duster’s keys.
“What do you mean?” Tess said, jogging after me. “Liam! Whose car is this?”
“Now? Nobody’s. But a couple of hours ago it was Gunner’s.”
“Who’s Gunner?”
I ignored her as I set down the suitcase and elbowed the glass on the driver’s side. It made a shattering noise as the shards struck the concrete, but there was no alarm. I reached in and unlocked the door. I carefully cleared the glass off of the seats before I climbed in and opened the passenger door.
“Get in.”
Tess climbed in beside me. I look around cautiously and put my pistol in my lap wary and apprehensive about the trip ahead of us.
“Upton,” she said, placing the suitcase and pillow case onto her lap. “What, exactly is in Upton?”
A shiver went down my spine. It was almost like fear. It had been so long since I had experienced that emotion that it was hard for me to acknowledge what it was.
No, brother, no! I could hear Kevin shout as I fought to contain the memories that haunted me.
Now I was returning directly to the source.
“My father’s place.”
17
Gunner had piled up iron plates for his Olympic weight set on the passenger side of the car. Tess propped her feet on them as she hugged the suitcase and the pillow case. From the interior rear-view mirror dangled a little muscle man from a metal chain, spinning around and around like he was trying to escape.
We drove out of the city, down a silent, deserted road and toward the town of Upton. The moon was a solid orb and a million stars blazed down like diamonds that lit up the sky. It was normally a fifty-minute drive, but the road was dead, and I was pushing one hundred. Although the car was old and beat-up, the engine growled ferociously with each push of the pedal.
“I guess it’s time to meet the parents,” she joked, trying to lighten the tone.
I didn’t respond.
“Helloo! Earth to Liam!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tess wave her arms. She still had the smell of sex on her. The combination of sweat, cum, and lust drove me crazy as the scent filled the car like sweet air freshener.
“I’m driving.”
“Why don’t you want to talk about your father? You act like he’s…”
“Dead? You’re goddamned right.”
Tess paused.
I remembered the funeral, the distant aunts, and uncles who looked at me with pity like I was supposed to be sad. I remembered thinking how ridiculous it was that I was even there, that I was expected to pay some kind of respect to my father. Most of all, I remembered the open casket and the cold body of a dead man looking like he was resting in far more peace than he deserved. His rigid lips twisted into an unnatural smile which was quite fitting since my father was a raging, violent alcoholic who never felt the need to smile.
“So… Was he a hitman too? Did he work for the Bianchi people?”
“Yes.”
“I take it you didn’t get along well with him.”
“I’m not talking about this,” I said, in a tone which left no room for argument. The last thing I wanted was to gouge open my chest and expose my feelings on the subject.
“I wished you would open up to me like I’ve done to you.”
“That’s not happening so don’t get your hopes up.”
“First I can’t talk about your brother, and now I can’t talk about your father either? What can we talk about? The weather? So I have to stick to small talk?” she spat. “Oh, Liam, isn’t the night warm? Maybe later we’ll take a romantic stroll through the moonlight or have a night-time picnic, and you can serenade me with a love song!” She mocked.
“What are you rambling about?” I said as we passed a sign which read, “Upton, Ten Miles.”
“Forget it.”
We sat in silence as we made our way to a place I wanted to forget existed.
“We’re not too far from Upton now.”
“Hey,” she took one hand from the suitcase and laid it on my forearm. I had a gut feeling she wasn’t goin
g to let the subject drop about my family. I gripped the steering wheel harder, and the muscles in my forearm shifted. But her touch was delicate, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it. “You’ve lost people. I get it. Really, I do. I’ve lost people, too. I know it hurts and it's hard to put your machismo aside and...”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Show weakness, and pretty soon you’ll end up in a ditch.”
“But that was before.”
“Before what?”
She squeezed my arm. “Before… us.”
I smirked and tried to shrug her hand away, but she squeezed harder.
“I’m serious, Liam.”
“Before us, I had six million dollars, and I was respected and feared for my position with the Bianchi family. Now? I have fucking nothing.”
“Don’t worry,” Tess said. “You’re still respected and feared. And we’re going to get your money back. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I didn’t reply to that, but I could appreciate her optimism. I just kept my eyes on the moonlit road and my foot on the pedal. We whirred past a truck stop with a large neon sign outside that read: Burgers all day and night! Best burgers you’ll ever taste! Give yourself a rest and a great meal too!
I finally responded to her attempt to make me feel better. “You didn’t upset me, sweet thing. It’s just something I don’t want to talk about.”
“I understand,” she said, softly. “One of these days you should teach me how to use a gun.”
“Oh, really?” I smiled at the thought of my woman firing off a few shots with my pistol. Now this was my type of conversation. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“Yeah,” she beamed. “Only if you teach me.”
“Of course,” I winked at her.
“Liam?” I loved the sound of my name on her lips.
“Yes?”
“I had an amazing time with you earlier too.”
I was dumbfounded, and I didn’t know how to respond. I never kept women around long enough to have a deep discussion about how we felt after a night of passion. It was “fuck ‘em and duck ‘em” and that was my motto. If I was a dirty bastard, I might have told her that it was the worst sex that I’d ever had and that I hadn’t enjoyed it at all just to see her squirm. But she was mine now, and I didn’t want to hurt her. Plus, I would be lying to myself if I wasn’t just a little overjoyed to hear that she enjoyed herself too.