Nausea

by Kurtz, Ed

  Daddy was home.

  * * *

  The blackness washed away like an ebbing tide, leaving nothing, not even white, which lasted for what seemed like a billion years. Then that too washed away and Nick was left with the throbbing pain in his neck and a throat that felt like it had been scrubbed clean with broken glass and sandpaper. He moaned, and the moaning hurt like hell, so after that he kept silent.

  The road jostled beneath him and the engine murmured ahead of him. The dense, warm air inside smelled strongly of patchouli and cigarette smoke. Nobody spoke.

  Nick opened his eyes. Paul still drove. Danny still sat beside him. Both men smoked. The woman shifted in her seat behind him, the one who called herself Mother. Nick planted a hand on the corduroy seat and heaved himself up to a sitting position. Tears spilled out of his eyes from the agony in his neck and head. Mother smiled coyly at him when he reached eye level with her. She was smoking, too.

  She said, “Good morning, sunshine.”

  “Thirsty,” Nick croaked.

  “We’ll stop for gas before long. One of the boys will get you some water then.”

  He nodded.

  “Anything else you’d like? A sandwich, maybe? Some cigarettes?”

  Nick shook his head. “Don’t smoke,” he said.

  “How about a lotto ticket? Do they have lotto in this state, Paul?”

  “Don’t know,” Paul answered gruffly.

  “Are you a gambler, Nick?” Mother asked, her coy smile widening. “Like to try your chances?”

  Nick narrowed his eyes.

  “Because you strike me as the type who likes to live on the edge. A hustler, the sort to shack up with whores. Oh, and a cold-blooded killer, at that! That’s a chance, isn’t it? Murdering perfect strangers in their place of employment? People who—now, correct me if I’m wrong, here—but these are—were, of course, were, because they’re quite fucking dead—these were people who’d never laid eyes on you in their too-short lives, isn’t that so?”

  “What—what is this?”

  “Homecoming, Nick. This is your homecoming. Because we’re going back home. And you, my son, are going to face the music.”

  Nick narrowed his eyes some more and before he knew it, they were closed again.

  He said, “Fuck me.”

  Mother laughed. “Too late for that, Nick,” she said. “You’re already fucked.”

  * * *

  Diagonal from the Cole house, on the other side of the street, was an almost identical house with the same neatly trimmed hedges in the yard. Its uniqueness lied not in the absence of a bicycle in the carport nor any outward expression of the homeowners’ children’s academic prowess, but rather in the plastic newspaper box affixed to the side of their regular mailbox at the edge of the front yard. It was stuffed full of soggy gray paper, three day’s worth of news at least. Whomever they had asked to pick up their paper had fallen asleep on the job, and Nick silently blessed that irresponsible soul as he crept from his Benz a block and a half away to the station wagon parked in the relative dryness of the neighbor’s carport. He brought along the slim-jim from his trunk and had the car open in seconds. He got into it quickly and shut the door with one hand while covering the dome light with the other until it faded out. From there he climbed into the backseat and watched the Cole house. He watched it for a little over three hours. Finally, at a few minutes past six in the morning, the rain having dissipated and the sun rising to dry out the world, the side door leading to the carport opened and out stepped a man who was either Nathan K. Cole or some guy Mrs. Cole was schtupping while the hubby was out of town. While he chatted with the missus and exchanges good-bye kisses, Nick snuck out of the station wagon on the passenger side and rushed back to the Benz. He caught up with the other Mercedes just outside the subdivision on the farm road. A sticker on its bumper proclaimed: MY CHILD IS ON THE HONOR ROLL AT UNION MILL ELEMENTARY.

  Nick said, “Hiya, Nathan.”

  * * *

  The quarry stopped three times between home and his final destination: once for gas, another time for breakfast tacos at a food trailer, and lastly at the First Mutual Savings and Loan on Chestnut and Riverside. Gassed, fed and moneyed, Nathan Cole finally went on to what he surely told his wife was work but was most assuredly not. Nick smirked when Cole’s Mercedes pulled into the driveway of a single-story starter home in one of those new cookie-cutter developments on the far south side of town. The pieces were coming together.

  Cole used a key on the front door and let himself in. Very cozy, Nick thought. He rolled up the street, turned around in a driveway and parked at the curb.

  It’s the wife, the minx. Gotta be. Figured out the prick’s screwing around, happens all the time—but Christ, a hit?

  He shook his head and walked up the side of the street as he fitted his gloves on his hands. Nick had no clear idea how his contact arranged jobs and he didn’t want to know. Some way or another people who wanted other people dead ended up in touch with the contact, and the contact tossed a series of numbers Nick’s way through the bus depot locker system that had suited them both for the better part of two decades. Everyone was happy—except for the corpse, of course. Still, questions sometime scratched at the back of his brain, questions like how an aggrieved housewife made the leap from discovery of her husband’s infidelity to murder. It took all kinds—no one knew that better than Nick—but the question remained.

  The house presented a faux sandstone façade that looked tabby cat orange in the morning light, ugly and cheap. All of the drapes were drawn over the windows and an expensive-looking pot full of nothing but dirt rested on the brand-new concrete stoop. Nick took in his surroundings, all the other houses and their windows, driveways, doors. The neighborhood was eerily quiet, uninhabited as if evacuated. Probably most of the houses hadn’t been sold yet, just stood empty waiting for the housing crisis to cool off. What houses did have people living in them were mostly empty, as well. It was a workday.

  So Nick got to work.

  This was a slightly more complicated job than some in that there was undoubtedly an innocent in the residence. For this reason Nick pulled a balaclava down over his face in the moment before he tested the back door, which was blessedly unlocked. Less mess, less stress. He went in.

  There was a gun in his waistband, a wire garrote in one jacket pocket, and a lead blackjack in the opposite pocket. Additionally, a five-inch blade was strapped to his left ankle, per usual—an insurance policy. He didn’t like knife work and always hoped to avoid it. Usually, he was successful.

  The back door led into a dim hallway that smelled strongly of laundry detergent. He hugged the wall and moved slowly to the end of the hall, which opened up into a kitchen. He waited, holding his breath and listening. He heard nothing, so he took the chance and peered into the kitchen. Nobody, just an incredibly tidy cooking space with no dishes in the sink and a vase on a small oak table with two tulips in it. Cute, Nick thought.

  He didn’t much relish gun work, either—Nick was a strangulation man—but he pulled the pistol from his waistband to cover his bases, holding it out the way cops did in movies when they were heading into dangerous territory. This upper-middle-class WASP with the kid on the honor roll and a Lexus for the wifey wasn’t exactly the head of a terrorist cell, but caution was key. Caution kept guys like Nick alive and out of prison.

  Not that he’d ever met a guy like himself.

  But still.

  To the right of the kitchen was a den with sparse furniture. No TV. To the left was a dining room with candles on the long table in the middle of it. The table was cheap, a do-it-yourself affair, probably from one of those mail order catalogues that filled every dump in America. Straight ahead was a tiny foyer with the front door in the center and two rooms off to each side. Both doors were closed. Mr. Nathan K. Cole was in one of them, almost certainly not alone. Nick stepped lightly into the center of the foyer, looked at one closed door and then the other.

  Eenie
meenie meiny mo.

  Creeping to door number one, he leaned in close and listened. Nothing, again. He tried the knob, opened it slowly with one hand while readying the pistol he hoped not to use with the other. The door swung open to reveal a square white room with an easel by the window and paint-spattered bedsheets on the floor. No people. Onto door number two.

  He listened at this door also, and at first he heard nothing suggesting habitation, which was decidedly impossible. He’d seen the guy go in and nobody had come out. Was there a cellar he didn’t know about, or a small attic? Or maybe he was already asleep, or hiding in a closet. A house as small as this provided endless possibilities, a thousand obstacles that could trip a guy up and it didn’t take more than one trip-up to ruin a cat like Nick. He touched the knob and bedsprings creaked on the other side.

  Nick exhaled quietly.

  Showtime.

  * * *

  They drove through the day and most of the next. They did not stop to sleep, only for gas and grub, and they switched drivers every four hours or so. There were no windows in the back of the van, but Nick was relatively certain he knew where they were going. He was being taken back home, back to atone for his sins.

  He dozed on and off. He was mostly asleep when the van shuddered to a halt and Danny reached back to slap his face.

  “Up,” Danny barked.

  Nick came to with a juddering gasp.

  “Where—?”

  “Home, you prick. Come on.”

  Paul got out and jerked the sliding side door open. Daylight assaulted Nick’s eyes.

  “Out,” Paul said.

  Nick grunted.

  “Up. Out. Fuck’s sake.”

  He sat up and his neck throbbed. Gradually he stepped down to the pavement and stood up. The first thing he saw was the sign that read MIDNIGHT COWBOY ORIENTAL MASSAGE.

  “Your place, I take it?”

  “It’s Mother’s.”

  “It’s about that.”

  Paul nodded. “Joe Motal,” he said. “And Hana Hyun.”

  “Seems pretty goofy,” Nick said, registering the names, “dragging a guy halfway across the country just to kill him.”

  “Kill him, he says,” Danny scoffed.

  Paul frowned. “Shut up.” He shoved Nick toward the door, a door he’d last passed through after killing two people he’d never met before in his life. “Upstairs.”

  Nick went up, pausing halfway to twist his neck and rub the tender flesh there.

  “What’s the connection between cowboys and Orientals, anyway?” he asked. “I never did figure that out.”

  “Ask Hana Hyun,” a gruff female voice called up from the bottom of the stairs—Mother. “Of course, you can’t now. You’ve killed her.”

  Nick went the rest of the way up, opened the door and stepped into the waiting area. It was all cleaned up: no blood, no yellow police tape. He wondered if the investigation was wrapped up. He guessed it didn’t much matter anymore.

  “Have a seat,” Paul instructed. Nick sat down in the same chair he’d waited in previously and waited for Danny and Mother to come up. Mother shut the door after her, locked it. She walked over to Nick, patted his knee in an appropriately maternal manner, sat down in the chair across from him. In the light of the room he could see she was not an entirely unattractive woman, her legs long and brown, her red hair styled like a 1940’s movie star. A ginger Barbara Stanwyck, maybe. She lighted a cigarette and tossed the pack to him. Nick caught it clumsily.

  “I don’t—”

  “—have one. I insist.”

  She tossed him a book of matches. This he caught more expertly. On the back was a purple silhouette of a naked woman, under which glittery letters spelled out SUGAR’S CABARET. Nick assumed it was another one of Mother’s business interests. He didn’t ask.

  “I guess a condemned man don’t got to worry about lung cancer,” he said as he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match.

  “Who’s the condemned?” she asked innocently.

  Nick touched the match’s flame to the end of the cigarette and inhaled the way he thought one did. The smoke spilled into his chest and his body shook with hacking coughs. Mother smiled and waited for him to stop.

  “You seem to be under the false impression that I mean to murder you, Nick,” she said at length.

  He wiped spittle from his lips and stared.

  “As it happens, you have killed more people than I ever have. Two more, to be exact. I’m not a killer. Neither are my boys.”

  Danny and Paul looked on with no interest.

  “But you are, aren’t you? You’re a stone-cold killer, aren’t you, Nick?”

  He knitted his brow and took another drag. His eyes watered furiously but he managed to handle it.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” he said. “You don’t know…the, uh, the circumstances…”

  “I know enough. I know you handled it like a champ, like a guy’s been doing it for a while, which maybe you have. I don’t know.”

  “No,” Nick said.

  “Well, doesn’t matter. Here’s the thing, Nick, let me lay it out for you. Motal’s no great loss. You saw that much for yourself, I gather. I did not indulge his…proclivities, and I can’t say he’s missed. Hana, on the other hand, is a different story. You owe me for her. And for the unwanted attention I’ve received in the wake of a double fucking homicide at one of my leases. Not good, Nicky. You got to pay damages.”

  “What, you’re going to cut off my pinkie or something?”

  Mother laughed. “God, no. I’m a businesswoman, not the fucking mob. You’re just going to do something for me, and when it’s done, we’ll be square.”

  “Even Steven, huh?”

  She grinned, and it was an ugly grin.

  “I’m a hustler, lady. It’s the only thing I know how to do. You want me to hustle somebody?”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Nicky. You’re more than just some lowlife hustler. Like I said, you’re a stone-cold killer. Most people couldn’t kill another person if their life depended on it. Everyone thinks they could, but when it comes down to brass tacks, that’s bullshit. They’d lose the nerve, most of them. Killing takes a special kind of predisposition, and baby, you’ve got it.”

  “No, no that’s not…” Nick trailed off, set his jaw. He took another long drag. This time his eyes stayed dry. “Everything just went to shit. It all just happened. It was bad, man. It was really bad.”

  “I’m sure of it. And I need you to be bad again, Nick. Tonight. And then, you and me are done.”

  Nick shook his head. Mother dropped her butt on the floor and ground it out beneath her heel.

  “Tonight, Nicky. You can sleep in the massage room if you want. One of the boys will wake you up in time for me to explain everything you’re going to do.”

  “What if I don’t do it?”

  Mother stood, flattened out her blouse and slacks with the palms of her smooth white hands.

  “Let’s not find out,” she said calmly, and winked.

  * * *

  They were both ass naked, naturally.

  He was on bottom, his hands planted on her hips as she rode him in a measured, rhythmic grind. She had handfuls of bedsheets on either side of them, gripping them in tight fists. His eyes were closed, hers were not. Nick raised the gun until his arm was perpendicular to his body, the barrel pointed more or less at Cole’s chest. The woman made a small, breathy sound and Cole grunted, piglike. Nick waited. He did not have to wait long. In the next second the woman’s head twisted to face Nick and her eyes went wide with disbelief.

  “Shit!” she said.

  Cole shuddered, taking her exclamation the wrong way as he climaxed. Nick sighed, loudly enough for Cole to open his eyes and see the strange masked man in the doorway with a gun aimed right for him.

  “Shit!” Cole said.

  The girl rolled off him and he slipped out, the end of a condom flapping at the tip of his softening penis. Sh
e dipped down beside the bed, protecting her modesty, and Nick stepped forward.

  “Get up,” he told her.

  “You’re the guy,” she said.

  Nick froze for a moment. Sometimes there was a twist, like in a movie or a serial TV show. One you didn’t see coming. He shrugged.

  “Yeah. I’m the guy.”

  “What guy?” Cole screeched. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched. “What’s going on?”

  A wicked smile played at the woman’s mouth and she stood up, modesty be damned. Her body was smooth and paper white. A small topaz-colored butterfly was tattooed on her left hip, fluttering carelessly to the side of a carefully trimmed strip of short, dark pubic hair. Nick kept her in his peripheral vision but his main focus was trained on Cole.

  “Lorraine?” Cole said.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Nick said. “Worry about me.”

  Cole looked at Nick, then back at Lorraine, and then back to Nick again.

  “Look, man,” Cole said, his voice quivering, “I didn’t know anything about this. About you, I mean. I swear to god.”

  “I don’t know this woman,” Nick said plainly. “But you’re Nathan Cole, yes?”

  Cole didn’t answer. He just stared.

  Nick looked to the woman, Lorraine. “Is this Nathan K. Cole, Lorraine?”

  She nodded. She looked more excited than afraid.

  (Aroused?)

  “You’d best get in that bathroom, then,” Nick said, gesturing toward the closed door beside her.

  “That’s a closet.”

  “Get in it.”

  Lorraine looked startled, but she did as she was told. As soon as the closet door clicked shut, Nick jammed the gun back into his waistband and withdrew the blackjack from his pocket.

  “Nighty night,” he said in a singsong way as he swung the blackjack down and smashed it against the side of Nathan Cole’s skull. Cole grunted and went flat on the bed.