Chevs Apache wasnt out front.
Whether that was good or bad, I couldnt say. Letting another day go past before I could do some serious ass-kissing, well, some serious sarcastic ass-kissing anyway, might be what the doctor ordered. Or it could be one step closer to him being done with my shit and throwing my possessions out the window for me to claim from the street.
From the alley, a sudden burst of dialogue.
– You fucking bitch, you fucked him, didnt you?
– Fuck you.
– You fucking cock tease bitch.
– Fuck you.
– You had his cock in your cunt, didnt you?
– Fuck you.
Going up the stairs, I considered the virtues of being homeless and friendless. The first of these being that no one would offer me a job that would turn into a crime spree.
I unlocked the apartment door, found I was just a little disappointed not to see Dot inside waiting to irritate me, walked into the dark livingroom, got tripped by someone hiding behind the door and went face-first into the carpet.
The someone lurking behind the door put his foot in my back and shoved me deeper into the carpet.
– Wheres our fucking can?
My hands flailed and hit something solid and heavy and I grabbed it.
– Its down the hall.
The foot shoved harder.
– What? What the fuck? Are you fucking? Is that a joke?
Of course it wasnt a joke, I was telling the absolute truth. The can, or bathroom if you will, was indeed down the hall. I wasnt sure why this person was referring to it as our can, or why finding it required battering me, but it was there. Perhaps I was a bit confused. That, along with, you know, my general exhaustion, emotional chaos, and fedupness with being fucked around got the better of my good manners as a host and the next thing I knew I was twisting and swinging the huge old phone my hand had found and listening to it make the kind of heavy thunk against a mans shin that only genuine craftsmanship can produce. This, followed by a faint ringing as the bell inside was jangled by the blow. A tone, oddly, in perfect harmony with the ringing still sounding in my ears from the shots Gabe had fired.
The guy, with what I can only assume was a genuinely desperate bladder condition, hopped off me and dropped into the Barcalounger that Chev had bought at the Melrose Trading Post, and clutched his shin.
– Fuck! Ow! Fuck!
I pushed myself off the floor and went to the wall and turned on the light and looked at him, a guy for whom the terms wiry and ‘pockmarked had been invented. He may also have been the inspiration for gap toothed, scraggly haired and waxen. White trash, I assume, goes without saying. But if one needs to have the point emphasized, I can draw attention to the oversize Dale Earnhardt, Senior, memorial-motif tank top he was wearing.
I blinked and looked at his bandaged shoulder and hand.
– I dont know you.
– You know me, son?
I turned, looked at the guy on the couch who had just spoken. He was tall and lean and wore well-used cowboy boots, jeans, Levi jacket, and a face that was just slightly more weathered than his clothes. Oh, and the gun in his work-gloved hand was really fucking big.
I figured answering him was a good thing to do.
– Im gonna say no and hope its the right answer.
The guy with the bandages picked up the phone and hit me in the back of the neck with it.
– Want our fucking can.
He may have said more nonsensical shit, but I was way too knocked out to hear it.
– Guy wake up, come on, get it together.
I got it together. No, thats a lie. I woke up, but I did not get it together. Not even a little bit. What I did was come to and discover a wrenching pain at the back of my neck, my hands tied behind my back, and the dude with the bandaged hand shoving a cellphone against my ear.
– Someone wants to talk to you, asshole. Wake up and listen.
The phone was ringing. It stopped, the line clicked, and one of those robot voices started talking.
Hello, you have reached 209-673-9003. Please leave a message.
I looked at the guy.
– What should I say?
– What? Say? Just answer the question.
– I. What question? Its voice mail.
– What? Jesus fucking.
He held the phone to his own ear.
– Sonofabitch.
Fingers snapped.
We both looked at the cowboy on the couch with the gun.
– Just dial it again, Talbot.
Talbot disconnected and started to dial.
– Fucker doesnt have any sense.
He listened to the phone ring, nodded at the cowboy.
– Here we go. Hello. Its me. Yeah. Well why the hell didnt you pick up? So take it off vibrate and turn on the damn ringer. No, do it later. OK. She there? Fuck you, I know shes not going anywhere. I meant is she next to you. So put her on.
He stuck the phone against my ear.
I cleared my throat.
– Uh, hello?
– Web?
– Yeeeah?
– Is that you?
– Yeah.
– What the hell are they doing with you?
– I.
I looked at Talbot.
– She wants to know what the hell youre doing with me.
– She? Damn it.
He took the phone from my ear and spoke into it.
– Bitch, just tell him what you were told to say. Jesus.
He put the phone at my ear again.
– Fucking people.
The voice on the phone spoke again, still a little blurred by my ringing ears.
– Web?
– Yeah?
– I think Ive been kidnapped.
I swallowed.
– Soledad?
– They want their container, Web. They say to get it for them fast or theyll do something to me.
– Wait. Hang on. I.
I looked at the Talbot.
– What container?
He slapped me.
– The can, fucker. Listen to the girl.
I listened.
– Go ahead.
– They want their container. Theyll give you a number to call when you have it. They want it by tomorrow night.
– OK, OK, I can…
My brain did a few doughnuts in the mud while I tried to figure out what words should come next. What exactly could I do? Could I call the cofsi Could I rescue her? Could I crawl under the wheels of a speeding vehicle and let myself be crushed if it meant having some peace?
And wait just a fucking second, my brain screeched to a halt and declaimed, are you totally being set up or is it just me?
I shook my head, almost laughed, was too pissed to actually do it.
– Youre totally setting me up, arent you, Soledad?
– I? Web?
– This whole deal has been one long setup. Like, that shit with your brother, all this. Even fucking me. Its all a setup. Im so being used here. You have been totally working me.
Silence on the line as she struggled to find something to say to squirm her way loose from my accusation.
Silence broken as she found the words.
– Web, you are such an asshole.
And she hung up.
Talbot poked me in the neck.
– Stop fucking around with her, shes not setting you up. Just listen to the bitch.
I looked up at him.
– She hung up on me.
He looked at the phone screen.
– Jesus.
He started to dial again.
– Man, you are one asshole. Girl calls and needs your help, been snatched, and you make like shes in on it. Way to trust people, man.
He put the phone to his ear.
– Fuck, going straight to voice mail. Bet hes calling me back now.
He looked at the cowboy.
– Should I hang up and let him call or keep dialing?
The cowboy rose from the couch.
– Put the phone away.
Talbot put the phone away.
The cowboy scratched the whiskers on his neck and walked over until his boot heels were inches from my face.
– She tell you what we want?
I looked up the length of his denim legs, past the scratched longhorn belt buckle to his leathered face.
– The can?
He tucked the gun into the belt at the small of his back.
– Yeah, thats it.
He squatted, held up a finger.
– She tell you what wed do?
– Something bad?
– Yeah. Something pretty bad.
He looked at Talbot.
– Go take a look out that window and see whats to be seen.
Talbot limped to the kitchen window and looked out.
– Nothing. Just the stairs and part of the parking lot and the street.
– Keep looking. Been here awful long without no one else coming home.
He rested a hand on the phone I clobbered Talbot with, and with which Talbot returned the favor.
– Old phone.
– Yeah.
– Must have hurt.
– A lot.
– Uh-huh.
He hefted the phone.
– Talbots been spoiling a bit to put a hurt on someone. Since he got himself cut.
Talbot turned from the window.
– That wasnt my fault.
– Just keep your eyes out there.
Talbot looked back out.
– Not my fault.
The cowboy rested the phone on his knee.
– Was his fault. Fella like your girls brother, he shouldnt be no trouble for no one. Talbot, he just isnt the kind who can admit he screwed up and let someone get the better of him.
He stood, took three steps, heels loud on the linoleum, and pounded the phone into Talbots face as he turned. And pounded it again as he went down. And again when he was on the floor. And again.
He hunkered next to the bloody rag-dolled man and stuck a gloved finger deep under his jaw alongside his throat. Apparently not liking what he detected, he raised the phone and brought it down once more.
For luck, I suppose.
This time, when he checked under Talbots jaw, he felt the stillness in the mans pulse that he was looking for, and he dropped the phone on Talbots dead body.
He stood and looked at me.
– You took that pretty well. Figured you for the screaming and crying type.
I shook my head.
– No, not me, Ive seen that kind of thing before.
He nodded his head, went to the sink, looked in the cupboard underneath, and came out with a plastic garbage bag.
– Yeah, guess you would have, with your job and all.
I rested my head on the carpet and watched as he shook out the bag and fitted it over Talbots crushed head.
He came over to me.
– And it looks like that trainings going to come in handy for you.
He grabbed one end of the knot that tied my hands and gave it a tug and it came apart.
– You best get cleaning.
He took the rope to the corpse and used it to tie the bag around its neck.
– And then go get our can, and call.
He tossed Talbots cellphone onto the carpet.
– Just call the last number he called on there.
He took the corpse under its arms, pushed up with his legs, let it flop over his shoulder and stood.
– Ill take care of this bit here.
He walked to the door, easy under the weight of the dead.
He opened the door.
– Go get my can. I want them damn almonds. Alright?
I stared at Talbots blood in my kitchen.
The cowboy tapped a heel on the floor.
– Said alright}
I looked away from the mess.
– Yeah. Alright.
He touched the brim of his hat.
– Good then. And, oh yeah, I got your bosss van. You can have that back too, when you bring the can. Case you need any other motivation.
And he went out the door, corpse on his shoulder, apparently prepared for any questions such a thing might raise.
That or just quick on the draw.
Almonds.
As I cleaned yet another crime scene, I thought about almonds.
Stripped to my underwear, a pair of sneakers, and rubber gloves I took down the white pillowcases I had hung over the kitchen windows to keep the morning sunlight from pouring in when I used to get up early and have my coffee before going off to teach kids how to read and write and add and subtract. And I thought about fucking nuts.
In all their guises.
Starting with myself.
Dropping the pillowcases into the bathtub after rinsing them out and dousing them in about a half gallon of bleach, I considered just how crazy I actually was. Not a question Id been apt to embrace for the last year, but one that seemed appropriate to the moment.
I brought my desk lamp and a clip light from Chevs bedroom into the kitchen and plugged them in. The improved lighting gave me a better idea of what I was dealing with. Studying the remains of a mans face spattered about the area where I prepared my meals, or opened my to-go containers anyway, and finding that I didnt really have any emotional reaction to speak of, gave me a better idea of just how out of normal mental alignment Id gotten.
I looked down at my nearly naked, blood-scrubbing self.
– Skewed.
I pulled a strip of paper towels off the roll Id gotten from under the sink and started wiping the little card table under the window.
– Your mentality, Webster Fillmore Goodhue, has become seriously fucking skewed.
I cleaned, wondering if the fact that it had taken witnessing a man deliberately murdered in front of me to shake this realization loose was a bad thing, or a really really really bad thing. There seeming to be no other options available.
The table clean, I carried it to the edge of the linoleum kitchen and set it safely across the carpet border of the livingroom. Along that edge, I spotted a rim of dark wet spots on the dirty carpet. I soaked a hand towel in cold water and blotted the spots before they could set. I worked some dish soap into the carpet fibers and left it to be finished later.
The worst of the mess was puddled below the window. Talbot had, quite fortunately it seemed, looked down after the first blow, sending most of the blood that had poured from his ruptured nose to the floor, rather than hosing the walls with it. Of course the cowboy had swung the phone in an uppercut on the second blow. Not so good. That meant the ceiling had a nice spray pattern on it. But the last three blows were all placed squarely once Talbot was on the floor on his back.
I looked up.
– Ceiling first.
I got the stepladder from the hall closet and started spraying and wiping, moving from side to side as my body crossed the beams of the lights and cast shadows over the blood, trying to see clearly.
When the worst was done, when Id scooped the partially congealed blood from the floor and scrubbed the walls and mopped and wiped and wiped some more, and taken four ruined sponges and the shredded remains of two paper towel rolls and three old Ts Id had to use as rags, and the mop head, and stuffed it all in the cleaning bucket and carried it downstairs and locked it in the trunk of my crapped-out 510 in the driveway, I poured the remains of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide into the empty window-cleaner spray bottle and misted the carpet and floor and walls. The carpet foamed in a couple spots, but it wasnt anything visible to the naked eye, so I let it go. Back up on the ladder, I sprayed the ceiling, searching for any last remains, and caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the dark window.
All but naked, on a stepladder, cleaning dead mans blood from my kitchen ceiling, I stopped and addressed the young man I saw there.
– Is it possible, my friend, that your coping mechanisms have been over-compensating for the shit that happened on that bus?
The young man in the window responded.
– What shit are you speaking of?
I continued the dialogue.
– That shit where a little girl from your class was hit by a stray bullet and died in your arms and you were covered in her blood.
He shrugged.
– Oh. That.
I put my hands on my hips.
– See, thats what Im talking about, that nonchalance about the whole thing, and also just kind of being a dick to everyone, thats not the way people react to traumatic situations.
He was unimpressed.
– Its not? You know of another reaction? Youve experienced another reaction? Man, as far as you know, this is totally normal. This may be the most normal thing youve ever done in your life.
I jabbed my finger at him.
– Fuck you! Thats fucked up. Im trying to really talk about this for a change and youre being all.
– What? Im being all what?
I froze, looked at my reflection for a long and deeply disturbing minute.
I shook my head.
– Man, I am not even having this conversation with you right now.
And I climbed off the ladder and laid myself spread eagle on the floor and stared at the flawlessly clean ceiling, and I think I may have cried for the first time in a year, but Im not entirely sure because a huge mass of sleep loomed and got its arms round my middle and dragged down and I was gone.
Mumbling as my eye slammed shut.
– Fucking almonds.
– I appreciate you cleaning up, you know.
I opened my eyes and found the daylight the pillowcases were meant to keep at bay was shooting me in the face.
– But its not really going to change anything.
I looked at Chev, sitting on the edge of his lounger, rubbing his eyes.
I pushed myself up on my elbows.
– Im sorry about the money, man.
He flopped back in the chair and let out all the air in his lungs.
– See, thats the point right there.
I shaded my eyes from the sun.
– I didnt even know he gave it to me, Chev.
He shook his head.
– Fuck the money. That is not the point. You missing the point is the point. I get the money thing, I get you going to see him. Hes your dad. I understand that more than you do. Jesus, man, I saw him like six months ago.
I sat up.
– What?
– When you didnt stop acting all fucked up after a few months, I went and saw L.L.
– Chev.
– I didnt know what to do, you know? Thea was like, Hell heal in time. People I talked to, the grief counselor at the hospital, they all said you needed to confront what had happened, talk about it in a supportive environment. Well, I knew sure as fuck that wasnt gonna happen. I read these books on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they described you pretty smack-on. I mean.
He laughed.
– Dude, you could be the poster boy for PTSD.
He untwisted the sleeve of his black T, where hed tucked his pack of smokes.
– But knowing what the situation was, that didnt help me to figure out how to help.
I was still wearing the cleaning gloves. I pulled them off.
– I didnt know you were doing all that.
– I know you didnt. You didnt have a clue.
He lit his cigarette and blew smoke.
– Web, it wasnt just me, it was everyone you know. At first, anyway. We were all running around trying to figure out how to get your shit together. The guys from the tattoo shop, teachers from the school, Po Sin, some other parents from over there. But you were so, man, acting like such a dick. People just got tired. They didnt know how to deal and got frustrated. It was tiring, man. Jesus, it is tiring.
He looked around for an ashtray, couldnt find one, flicked on the carpet.
– So. I went and saw L.L.
– Man. I.
He held up a hand.
– No. Dont. Now is not the time. I mean. I went over to Chez Jay took a look at him, man, I started to cry. And. You know, not because I was pissed. It was, man, it was so fucking good to see him, you know.
He clenched his teeth.
– And that hurt like a son of a bitch. Let me tell you it did. Talk about feeling guilty. Anyway. He turned around, saw me. Know what he said?
I nodded.
– The wrong thing.
He took a long drag.
– You got that right. Said, Ah, Chev, come to see me after all these years. Whats gone amiss, son, lost the strength of your convictions?
I closed my eyes, tried to imagine he was mistaken about what my father had said, knew he was not.
I opened my eyes.
– Did you hit him?
Smoke drifted from his nostrils.
– No. I walked out. Because right there, man, in that moment, I ceased to care anymore.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees.
– The man had finally, after the, after the accident, after the shit he told us, he had finally, in that moment when something could have been done, he had finally gone too far. Man, I didnt even know there was road left to travel on that route, but he found it and drove it and that was the end of the line for me. I didnt hit him. I did not want to hit him. I just wanted gone. I walked out.
– Good.
He nodded.
– Yeah. Good. But heres the thing, man, the point.
He looked at the floor, shook his head, looked back up at me.
– Like fucking father, Web, like fucking son.
I opened my mouth.
He closed it.
– No. Wait. Listen.
I listened.
– He wasnt always like that. He was always a son of a bitch, always talked shit, but he wasnt always mean. That didnt really start till after the accident. He didnt really start forcing everyone out of his life until after the accident.
He scratched his shoulder.
– If that rings any bells.
He got up.
– So its not about the money. Or about you seeing L.L. If my dad were still around, no matter if hed turned out to be the biggest bastard ever, Id want to check on him every now and then. Its not even about you hurting my new girls feelings so bad that she doesnt want to come here and I had to go to her place and sneak in and out of her bedroom because her folks would freak out if they knew her new boyfriend was a twenty-nine-year-old rocker with a tattoo parlor.
He walked to the hallway, stopped.
– Its about you not trying to get better. Its about everyone else trying so hard that they wear themselves out and cant try anymore, and you just letting them beat themselves against you while you act like nothing fucking happened. Acting like youre no different. Like you havent changed at all.
He turned from me.
– Web, its about me getting tired, man. Its about, I, man, its about I feel like Im on that same road I was on with L.L., about thinking were almost out of blacktop. And you just keeping the pedal to the metal, and not even trying to put on the brakes.
He put a hand on top of his head.
– And I hate that feeling, man.
He walked into his bedroom.
– I hate it.
And he closed the door.
Me, I sat on the kitchen floor and thought about how it was a good thing Id cleaned up as well as I did. Because if Chev had known a man was killed in his apartment last night, the shit would really have hit the fan.
Then I got up, cleaned myself up a little, put on some clothes, got the keys to the Apache from Chevs jacket, and went out to go talk to a man about why the girl Id fallen for, and, you know, already thoroughly alienated, had been kidnapped.