Innocent Monster (32 page)

It pretty quickly got serious between her and Paul. Sarah spent her once-a-month long weekends up in Vermont and Paul Stern was down in Brooklyn twice a month. I think I knew where they were headed before they did. It was hard for me not to like Paul, especially since we spent a lot of time together retracing the steps Rico and I had taken decades before. It helped me remember the Rico I had loved without the bitter aftertaste in my mouth. It was harder for Paul because he could only know Rico through me, but, I suppose, second-hand love is better than no love at all.

One icy cold night, long after Bordeaux In Brooklyn had closed for the day’s business, I went for a walk along the Promenade to just try and clear my head. It was quite late and the little strip of concrete above the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was totally deserted. I leaned over the rail and gazed across the river at lower Manhattan. It still didn’t look right without the twin towers there. I don’t think I would ever get used to them being gone no matter how many years passed. I remembered what my dad’s friend Harry would say about the arm he’d lost at Anzio in WWII: “You learn how to work around it, but you never stop missing it.”

As far as trying to clear my head, it wasn’t working out, so I turned right and walked back towards the store. But before I got ten feet, something slammed hard into my right shoulder and sent searing pain shooting down my back and along my arm. A thousand stars exploded behind my eyes and I lost my balance. A strong arm shoved me down and I landed with a hard thump, the back of my head banging against the concrete for good measure. I tried shaking out the cobwebs, but moving my head at all only made the pain that much worse and exploded more stars. My right arm was numb and useless. I could sense that my shoulder was not where it should have been. Basically, I was screwed.

“I told you you shouldn’t’ve fucked with me, asshole.” I recognized the voice, but couldn’t quite place it. “You don’t remember me?” he said. “Maybe this will help.”

Bang!
Now my left thigh was on fire.

“David Thompson,” I said through pain-clenched teeth.

“Give the man a cigar.”

“Nathan Martyr’s doorman and all around ass-licker.” My eyes were watery but I could see a smile on Thompson’s twisted face.

Bang!
My other leg was now afire.

“I’m gonna fuck you up and there’s nothing you can do about it, because no matter what you think is happening to you, it can’t be. See, I’m in Martyr’s loft, hanging with some of his friends. Friends that will all testify that I was there with them.”

“Then you better kill me, butt-boy, or I’ll kill you.”

“Thanks for the suggestion, shitbird.”

Bang!
I heard more than felt my ribs cracking and I started the slow fade into unconsciousness. As I slipped into the darkness, I tensed for the next blow, but it never came. I heard Thompson screaming in pain, then something fell down next to me. Thompson. He was convulsing, writhing, his arms and legs twitching, banging into me. Footsteps ran towards us. Thompson cried out in pain so that it bruised the night. There was a dull thud. The convulsing stopped. Then I thought I heard a woman calling my name, but realized I must have already been unconscious. She couldn’t be there.

The woman I’d known as Mary Lambert was sitting at my bedside. I was sore all over and, apparently, a confused elephant had decided to perch on my chest. There was an intravenous drip in my left arm and cold packs on both thighs. My right shoulder and ribs were taped up. There was a sling on my right arm and a brace around my neck.

“Hi,” I said in an old man’s voice. “Where’s Thompson?”

“Under arrest.”

“You Taser him?”

“Uh huh,” she said.

“I hear those things can be painful.”

“Very, but not nearly as painful as when I dug my heel into his nuts.”

“Maybe we can discuss that some other time,” I said, “like when I can breathe again.”

“Sure, Moses Prager. Anything you want.” She stood up out of her chair, knelt over me, and kissed my forehead. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. My name is Pamela Osteen.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Osteen,” the old man said. “It is
Miss
Osteen?”

“It is.” She waved her ringless left hand at me.

“You look an awful lot like a woman I was falling in love with named Mary Lambert.”

“I know that broad. Pretty gal, but a liar. I promise you I can be everything she was and lots of things she wasn’t.”

“Nice to know. Why’d you come?”

She winked. “To save your ass.”

“Thanks for that, but—”

“To tell you how sorry Mary Lambert was for lying to you, that it killed her inside to do it because she felt the same things you did, but that she had a job to do.”

“And you?”

“To ask that even if you can’t forgive Mary, to give me a chance.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

She smiled that smile of hers. “Well, then, you won’t mind if I stick around while you decide.”

“Where will you stay?”

“As close to you as you’ll let me.”

“That might be pretty close.”

“I’ll risk it.”

That summer, about a week before the grand opening party for Sunrise and Vine, I got one of those postcard invitations in the mail. It was for a showing of Sashi Bluntstone’s new work to be held at some gallery in Chelsea. The name of the show was “Art In Captivity” and I wanted to throw up. I had hoped that Max and Candy would have learned something from getting the shit scared out of them. That they might have grown up, but people don’t change. It was one of the harsh paradoxes in life that everybody dies, but not everybody grows up. Sashi was back to being the family ATM.

On the front of the invitation was a color reproduction of one of the paintings to be displayed, and on the back, above the invitation copy, was a small photo of Sashi. She looked utterly miserable. She always looked utterly miserable unless there was a beagle licking her face. I wondered if she wasn’t destined to die young. I wondered if a cold and random universe was any crueler than a God who had chosen this one time to say yes.

THE END

F+W Crime is committed to developing the past, present, and future of crime fiction in all of its forms. With widely-praised content at its core, F+W Crime offers readers a true community experience that crosses all spectrums of media, and boldly shares in the evolution of how a story can be told.

Visit us today for information on new authors, exclusive offers, and more!

fwcrime.com