Holy Death (24 page)

He thought about the Santa Muerte candle. He thought about it igniting his hair. He thought about how sometimes Death giveth, and sometimes it taketh away.

“DeVaughn,” Lafitte said. “I’ve got one more thing to say to you.”

“Please, man, please.”

“Your brother, us killing him? He totally deserved it, man.”

DeVaughn’s face. It got blacker than it already was. Heat waves coming off his cheeks. “You motherfucker.”

Then Lafitte whispered to Melissa, “But you probably don’t.”

He shot her in the middle of her back and ran around the doctor’s house to the backyard before anyone else knew what was going on.

Melissa crumpled to the asphalt.

DeVaughn let out a wail the likes of which this neighborhood had never heard before. He ran for her, dropped to his knees beside her.

BGMs took shots at where Lafitte had been, where they thought he had run. But he was gone. Wayward shot got DeVaughn in the shoulder. Another one got him through his other foot. He barely noticed.

The FBI man and his people dropped back into their car and screamed out in reverse. BGMs took potshots and cracked the side windows and made holes all over the front of it and the damn thing made a
clang
and some squelching and just stopped the fuck working. Cop cars finally showing up, a whole goddamn train of them. Two trains, one from each end of the street.

All the BGMs ducked into their rides and dodged cop cars that were trying to cut them off. Some made it, some didn’t, the whole street a clusterfuck of cars all over lawns and the street, and sirens out of sync finally drowning out DeVaughn. People stepping out onto their porches, many with pistols in their hands. The doctor dead on his lawn, riddled with BGM bullets.

Stoudemire out of his car again, yelling into his phone and at local cops simultaneously, the cops ignoring him, doing what they had to do—arresting BGMs and telling people to go back inside their homes and running after Lafitte and ordering some K-9s to the scene.

Then the local news van showed up.

Nobody had gotten to DeVaughn and Melissa at ground zero yet.

*

S
he was not all the way gone. Close, though. DeVaughn cradled her head and cried,
goddamn it
, and brushed hair and blood away from her mouth. The exit wound through the front of her dress had taken out her stomach and parts of her lungs and ribs, spread all across the road. She was still moving her eyes, looking up into DeVaughn’s and weakly flopping her arm until her hand rested on his cheek.

“No,” she said. “No.”

“Baby, I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry, baby. I fucked up, baby. Don’t leave me here, baby, baby, please, baby...”

Her rasp, critical.

She tried to say “Love.” She tried again and choked and blood poured from her mouth.

He wasn’t going to let her go this way. She wouldn’t have wanted it that way. Fuck no. DeVaughn turned her head, let the blood fall from her mouth. He checked to make sure she was still with him. Still had a little breath in her body. Still blinking up at him, still holding her hand to his cheek.

He pulled his Glock from his waistband. Put a bullet in the chamber. “Baby.”

The cops were coming closer now, guns drawn. Shouting at him but who the fuck cared?

He took Melissa’s hand, wrapped it around the Glock’s grip. He noticed she was maybe grinning now, the best she could do. He wasn’t sure, but he hoped she had enough strength to squeeze her hand on the grip. Didn’t matter. He placed her finger on the trigger. He placed the barrel in his mouth. He squeezed Melissa’s finger—

Pretty sure the cops fired first. Couldn’t even let a black man commit suicide the way he wanted. Had to kill him themselves. Shots fired from all around hit both Melissa and DeVaughn, but maybe Melissa had one last muscle spasm before she went away, because the Glock went off and DeVaughn’s head blew open and he fell backwards as the cops kept firing.

The closest cop swore her last breath sounded something like, “Mine.”

––––––––

S
toudemire said, “That was that.”

Then nothing. He stayed seated, staring off at the far corner of the room, fingers absently scratching his forehead. Hospital noises in the background—beeps, blurps, barely-understandable intercom calls, cheery nurses talking to patients as if they were children. Rome waited for the punchline. It had to come. How was that an ending?

“That’s...that?”

Stoudemire cleared his throat. “Yeah, sorry. Got lost in my head. Um, yeah, we got lucky. Some of the residents must have noticed what was going on outside. Called the cops, so our back-up was just in time. I think they said seven calls in three minutes. They sent an army.”

“But...got’way?”

A sigh. This guy, him and his theatrics. “We’re following up on leads.”

“Got...away.”

“Jesus, you’re going to make me say it? No, I’m not. You actually had him
in prison
and lost him, so don’t even, alright?”

“Where?”

Quiet.

Rome said it again. “
Where?
”

“The dogs lost him in a Circle K parking lot. The camera was pretty old, but shows him taking off on a bike. We found the bike a week later, in the Back Bay. And we have the usual sightings. Three of them turned out to be good. Last one was in Tennessee. He’s heading north again. We’ll work with Minnesota’s Bureau pretty closely. Except, you know, I’ve got to go to Washington first.”

Rome shook his head. “Off the...case.”

Stoudemire’s expression, pissy teenager. “Not entirely.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus...” Stoudemire stood. “I was sent to evaluate you, you know? See if you were in shape to help us out.”

I know
.

“The whole goddamned point of telling you, but you’d rather piss me off. You’d rather sit there in your own drool and make me look like, uh, like, like, I don’t know, some sort of...you know, fuck it. I’m going to tell them you’re one step above diapers. Can’t even put a sentence together. No, you’re not up to this.”

I know
.

“And once I tell them, it doesn’t matter how many women I fuck in the line of duty, I’m still the best man for the job.”

I know
.

“Hope you get better soon, Rome.” Stoudemire knuckled the plastic rail at the foot of the bed. “One day we’ll get together and laugh about this. Keep your eye on the news. We’ll get him.”

And Stoudemire was gone.

And Rome thought:
No, you won’t
.

He buzzed the nurse’s station. He wanted another juice box.

*

H
e kept an eye on the news. Day after day. Night after night. There was hardly anything about Lafitte at all. Some people even questioned if the havoc down South was caused by Lafitte at all. Pressure on the step-parents didn’t work. They were stone cold. They gave interviews sneering at the idea they helped Billy. He hadn’t seen his stepfather in ages, and it had caused a lot of bitterness. Why would they
help
that monster?

Rome wished he could take a crack at them. They had “the look.” They were one thousand percent full of shit.

To catch Lafitte, an agent needed to not only think the way he did but
feel
the way he did. Lafitte was primal these days. His decisions were made by instinct, it seemed, starting with his son’s death. He had lost his reason to act reasonable. Every move now was like a bug attracted to a lightbulb. Survival. Plus police training. Okay, and plus whatever the fuck he learned from Steel God. And three years in prison. Can’t forget prison.

If Rome had to guess what went down in that hospital room with Ginny, it wasn’t murder. But it wasn’t suicide, either. It was...mercy? She had wanted to die for a long time. No one had wanted to let her. Not Rome, not her mother, not her doctors and nurses. Billy was the only one who had loved her enough to let her go. He had loved her too much to kill her, but enough to give her the means to do so.

But Lafitte had his own selfish reasons, too. Once she was dead, no one could ever use her against him again.

Survival. Bug to the bulb.

So Rome kept watching the news. He got a little better every day. He regained control of his arms, for the most part. Still some trouble with the right side. His skull, which would be forever dented, looked less like Frankenstein’s monster as the stitches came out and the scars were kind of covered as his hair grew back around them, but they were still reminders and would be for as long as he lived.

Physical therapy. Learning to keep his balance in a wheelchair, learning to push himself along. He’d probably end up in an electric wheelchair, but he would still need the ability to push himself if the battery died or he got stuck. He had to relearn how to hold his head up on his neck. It felt as if someone had a noose around it, jerking hard, but day by day it got easier. He learned to keep his spit in his mouth, to swallow again, to breathe through his nose and keep his jaw closed.

He learned to say more than two words at a time. Not complete sentences yet, but he was getting there. Maybe not next month, maybe not even next year, but eventually he would be able to
walk
into a conference room at the Bureau, even if it meant on a prosthetic leg. He would be able to
seat himself
at the table without assistance. He would be able to
give a complete statement
to the committee on why he should be retained as an independent consultant on the Lafitte case, since, obviously, Stoudemire had made an impossible mess out of the whole thing. And he would turn his much less awful face in Stoudemire’s direction as he said it. He would grin while he did so. He would say, “Enough is enough. It’s time to catch Lafitte, and I’m the only one who can do it.”

All of them would surround him, shake his hand, thank him for agreeing to come back. All of them except Stoudemire, of course, who would be shunned. Possibly even confined to a desk for the remainder of his career, his pay docked in order to pay for sexual harassment settlements.

It was as close to sweet dreams as Rome got anymore.

*

H
e was having one of those dreams one night—this one not in a conference room, but on a stage in front of hundreds of Special Agents, all of them honoring Rome for his diligence in pursuing Lafitte, finally catching him single-handedly on a boat in the middle of the Bering Sea as Billy tried to row to Russia.

They were calling his name. “Franklin! Franklin! Frank! Agent Rome!”

But all of their voices sounded the same, until it was one voice, not calling out loudly, but in a low rough husk.

“Rome. You there? You with me?”

He blinked awake. Room dark except for the soft nightlight above his bed, a soft blue buzz all night long. He’d become pretty good at guessing the time from the quality of light in the room and the coolness of the air and the strength of cleaning solvent. This time, two, two thirty. He turned to the voice. He would never forget that voice.

His face, though. It took looking the man in the eyes. He sat in the same chair that Stoudemire had sat in not even a month before to tell the story, but he’d moved it much closer. Knees wide, leaning forward, hands grasped together. The face, patches stretched like plastic wrap, scars like cracks in old teacups, shaved clean. His head, too, shaved clean. One ear was a bit shriveled, smaller than the other. His eyes were bright.

Rome smacked his lips a couple of time to get some moisture in his mouth. Swallowed. Then said, “Billy.”

“There we go. Goddamn, man. Look at you.”

Lafitte wore a white tank-T. Rome couldn’t see his bottom half, but would’ve guessed jeans and boots. The usual. Rome looked at Lafitte’s hands again to make sure he hadn’t missed a knife or a gun. Billy held them up, flashed the fronts, the backs, said, “I’m clean.” They were no longer wrapped in duct tape, as Stoudemire had described, but they’d definitely seen some heat. Lafitte couldn’t even stretch his fingers all the way out. The skin, once again melted plastic, and too pink.

Rome then turned to the spot above him where he knew there was a camera for the nurses to watch him sleep.

“Yeah, I already got it. No one’s coming. Some alone time, you and me.”

Rome asked, “You okay? Your heart?”

A grin. He thumped his chest. “Could be better. Pretty sure the doc was right. It was a goddamned heart attack. It hurt like fuck, but then I got over it. The medicine helps so far. I stocked up when I got here, too.” He lifted a plastic shopping back from the floor beside him, filled to the brim with pill bottles, vials, syringes, bandages, gauze, plenty more. “I got some for you, too.”

Rome scrunched his eyebrows.

“Just in case.”

Rome said, “Motherfucker.”

Quiet.

Then Rome said, “Ginny?”

Lafitte looked away. “Feeding tube. Can’t talk, can’t control her arms, legs. Brain going to mush. Jesus. You got lucky, you know? You’re fighting back. But Ginny, you met her. You know. I mean, she flat out
asked
me to kill her. And I couldn’t. Look at her now.”

“Sorry.” What else to say? Even if this motherfucker was a stone cold selfish murdering pile of catshit, Rome knew what Ginny meant to Lafitte.

“Yeah. I know. Listen,” Lafitte set the bag down again. “You’re never going to believe me, I know, but here goes. If she hadn’t shot at me first, I never would’ve shot her. Promise.”

“Fucking liar.” Rome’s blood pressure monitor bleeped faster, faster.

“You tried to get me killed in prison, too. Fair is fair. Maybe we’re not even, but still.”

Faster, faster...

A nurse came on the intercom. “You okay in there?”

Rome stared down Lafitte hard. Said. “Fine. Bad dream.”

“You sure?”

“Good. I’m fine.”

He
willed
the beeping to slow down. Turned and watched the numbers go from one hundred to ninety to eighty.

Lafitte shook his head. “I figured.”

“What did you figure?”

“You might hate the ever-living fuck out of me, but you’re not going to let anyone else take me down. I’m all yours. Right?”