Nausea (12 page)

“Yeah,” Nick haltingly agreed. “I guess that’s about right.”

Charise smiled, melting his heart a little bit at a time.

“Y’know, I bet this dude gives you the next step. Another code, maybe, something like that.”

“Might be,” he lied.

“And there’s other folks, right? With their own codes and shit?”

“Probably,” he lied again.

“Then it’s a race. It’s on, man! You got to get moving.”

“Well…”

“Hell, I wish I could go with you.”

Nick’s eyes widened. He said, “You do?”

“Sure, this sounds like a lot of fun, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Fun.”

“Too bad I’m stuck here till closing time.”

“Too bad.”

“But let me know, huh? How it goes, I mean.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

“And what you win, of course.”

“Of course.”

Her smile broadened and she touched his hand, which made his skin run hot. His drink was empty and his head was floating on a string. Charise produced a notebook from her pocket, studied it for a second, and then said, “It’s eight bucks if you want to close out, and I guess you ought to. You’ve got to find this dude, right?”

“Right,” Nick said.

He reached for his wallet and his face immediately fell. Eight dollars was a fortune beyond his reach.

“Shit,” he said, opening the wallet and extracting his last five bucks.

“Did I say eight?” she said. “I meant five.”

With an embarrassed look he forked over the fiver. She accepted it, touched his hand again, and stood up.

“See you soon?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Go get ‘im, hon.”

“Right,” he said. “I will.”

With that, he exited the warmth and relative comfort of the corner bar and its pretty bartender to murder a man he had never met.

Nick never saw Charise again.

* * *

He appropriated the photo. Stared at it in the front seat of the car for the better part of an hour, parked at the farthest end of the lot where he couldn’t even see the kids’ apartment. Todd was smiling with his eyes closed; Brent seemed distracted by something off in the distance.

Sweet Lorraine was looking directly at the photographer, her hair wet and slicked back over her head, tiny droplets of water beading all over her sunny little face.

She wore a T-shirt with an unfamiliar cartoon character on the front. It was white and wet, and her nipples showed through. Neither of the men on either side of her appeared to notice or care. Nick wondered what were the photographer’s thoughts on the subject? Had it been a sort of couples retreat? Todd and Brent, Lorraine and the invisible photographer, sporting a throbbing erection behind the camera, impatient as all hell for the day’s group activities to wind down so he could crawl into the tent with Sweet, Sweet Lorraine?

Happy as a baby boy…

Until she ordered a hit on him, that is.

Nick’s breath hitched in his chest at the thought that he might have done it—that whoever had snapped that picture was dead somewhere, the life strangled out of him by none other than Nick himself. He had already killed three people she knew, why not four, or six, or twelve? Why was this woman having people in her life rubbed out?

Who the fuck was she?

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and heavily sighed.

There was only one way to find out.

* * *

He had a name and an address, an empty wallet in his pocket and no weapon.

Even Steven
.

A killing for a killing.

Nick leaned back on a bus bench plastered with some real estate agent’s grinning mug and held his breath. He wished he’d never invested so much heart in anyone, enough to get that angry. He wished the worst thing he’d ever done was rip guys off in pool halls and bars. He wished he’d never met Misty—Spot to his Lucky.

He sure as shit didn’t feel lucky now.

This isn’t me,
he thought.
I hustle. I don’t do this.

I don’t do this.

Except he did. He had, anyway. Lost his cool, his mind. Maybe his soul. The latter billowing out of him, through his nostrils and mouth and eyes, colorless and odorless like natural gas. He couldn’t even feel it at the time, but he could feel the absence now. The empty pit deep in the center of him, the void he knew he could never fill again. Not if he saved a thousand lives—or ended them.

Robert W. Hart. What had he ever done to Nick? Or anyone else for that matter?

He considered whether the guy deserved it. If, perhaps, he was a kiddie fiddler or something, someone so vile he ought to be put down, only the justice system would never have the balls to do what needed to be done.

But Nick also considered the possibility that someone just wanted the cat out of the way, an amorous competitor interested in his wife, or a greedy business partner, or just some psycho pissed that Hart cut him off in traffic.

Would he ever know? Would Hart confess? Would he want him to?

Could he look him in the eye when he did it?

No
, Nick decided. He couldn’t look him in the eye any more than he
could
do it. Those people in the cathouse, he was in a state of rage, he thought he was protecting someone, rescuing her. Taking revenge. Something.

This was different. Something else. No connection to it whatsoever. Nick wasn’t angry at Robert Hart. And he wasn’t likely to get that way. He was a nothing, a chimera. A phantom. A goddamned name printed in the white pages, smudged now where Nick had pressed his thumb against the page.

A total stranger.

The bus appeared at the intersection, groaning and revving as it rolled through the green light before squealing to a stop in front of Nick. The doors breathed open, but he shook his head and waved the driver on. As the doors sighed shut again and the bus started to roll, Nick thought about strangers, and about killing them. He vaguely recalled some true-crime show on cable TV talking about that guy in Texas, back in the ‘60s, who picked off all those people from the watchtower. He hadn’t known a single one of them, and there would have been countless more if he hadn’t been cut down like the mad dog he was. Thing was, they did an autopsy on the guy when it was all said and done, found a tumor the size of a golf ball on his brain. Watching that, Nick had wondered whether the man was responsible for the tragedy at all, or if one could place the blame on the tumor. Maybe he wasn’t himself anymore. Maybe that thing killed what was human in him, only left the cold husk. Nick didn’t reckon the families of all the people the guy killed would much care to hear about that. Loads of people were walking around with tumors in their skulls, and for the most part they weren’t climbing towers with sniper rifles.

And besides, Nick was the picture of health. As far as he knew. Until Mother and her boys discovered that Robert W. Hart still had air in his lungs and life in his eyes.

A killing for a killing.

A stranger’s life for mine.

He said, “I can’t.”

Beside him, an old man in a rumpled plaid golf cap said, “What’s that?”

Nick hadn’t seen him sit down. He jumped a little, looked wide-eyed at the man, who shook his head and pursed his lips.

“I said I can’t,” Nick said.

“Christ,” the old man grunted. “This fucking town.”

“Yeah. This fucking town.”

The guy rolled his eyes. For a fleeting moment, Nick wondered if
he
could be the guy, this Hart. Because anyone could, as far as he knew. This crabby, elderly man, waiting on the bus to take him God knew where—what if Nick followed him, watched him, waited for him to be alone? And then…what? He couldn’t imagine the next step. In the movies the killer has a gun, or at least a knife. All Nick had were his hands and a heart beating hard enough against his ribs to burst. He shut his eyes and pictured the old man dead, sprawled out on the ground, his limbs arranged like he was awkwardly running. A life snuffed out to preserve one worth nothing. A goddamned hustler. A murderer. No friends, no family. Not even a soul.

It didn’t make sense.

Nick moaned.

“Christ’s sake,” the old man muttered.

Nick rose, jammed his hands into his pockets, and shuffled off with the old man’s clear blue eyes trained on him. The guy called after him, “Why don’t you clean up your act and get a job like everybody else?”

I’ve got one
, Nick thought.
But I just can’t do it.

* * *

The only thing different about the place since the first time he saw it was the darkness enshrouding it. That, and the absence of a nude lunatic in the yard. Nick rolled past it, his headlamps off, and stopped up the street and around the corner. Part of him intended only to run surveillance tonight, to watch and learn. But another part felt certain she was not only home, but waiting for him. Impatiently. Giddily, maybe. He shuddered at the thought of her bloodlust, or whatever it was, even as his cock stirred in his trousers at the memory of her shameless display. A frown consumed his face at the latter. The first time he flew in an airplane he got an erection when the thing touched down—he was fifteen years old and it wouldn’t go away, so he waited until everybody else was off before he stood up to deplane. That was anxiety then. He didn’t know what it was now. He didn’t want to know.

Nick adjusted himself and got out of the Benz.

* * *

Hart downed three fingers of rye and slammed the glass back down on the bar almost hard enough to break it.

The bartender, a wiry guy with a Nietzsche mustache obscuring his mouth, barked, “Hey.”

“Sorry,” Hart said.

The bartender scrunched his substantial eyebrows together and stalked off, keeping his eyes on Hart, who poked a cigarette in his mouth and tried to get a disposable lighter going. His thumb clicked the button over and over, but all it would do is spark.

“Fuck,” he said.

Sulfur filled his nostrils then and a lit match came into view. Hart jumped a little, craned his neck to get a look at the kid beside him, a dark-faced youth pinching the match between two fingers and raising his brow. Leaning forward, Hart touched the end of the cigarette to the flame and darted his eyes to the matchbook on the bar as he sucked inward.
SUGAR’S CABARET,
it read on the back.

“I know that place,” he said, gesturing at the matchbook as he leaned back into position and took the smoke from his lips. “You know a girl there called Destiny?”

“I don’t know any girls there,” the kid said. “Never been.”

“Oh,” said Hart. “I was wondering if she still danced there.”

“Couldn’t tell you, pal.”

Hart shrugged, scratched at his beard. “You should,” he said. “Go, I mean. Thanks for the light.”

“No problem.”

The mark signaled for the bartender, who roundly ignored him. When the kid beside him cleared his throat, the bartender flashed an exaggerated smile and went over to him.

“Two of what he was having,” the kid said, pointing at Hart with his thumb.

The smile vanished, but the bartender got to work.

“And thanks again,” Hart said with a hint of embarrassment.

“This round’s on you.”

“Gladly.”

When the glasses appeared in front of them, the two men sipped and smoked in silence for several long minutes before Hart abruptly stabbed out his smoke in the ashtray and slammed what remained of his bourbon. He then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, shook his head, and turned his watery brown eyes on his new friend.

“You know,” he said, his voice trembling almost imperceptibly, “I’d never have guessed on someone so young. What are you, twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

“Nineteen. What do you mean, you wouldn’t have guessed?”

“You’re him, right?”

“I’m who?”

“Kid, please don’t fuck with me. Not over something like this. I’m not going to turn this into a fight. I’m not even going to try to run. I just want to get loaded before we get down to business—is that too much to ask?”

The youth narrowed his eyes and sucked on the cigarette, pinching it awkwardly much like he had the match. Hart sniffed, took the smoke from him. Held it gingerly between his first and middle fingers like a pair of chopsticks.

“Like this,” he said. “You look like a
Hogan’s Heroes
villain the way you hold it. When’d you start?”

“Not very long ago.”

“Might as well quit while you’re ahead, kid. Those things’ll fucking kill you.”

“I s’pose we all got to go sometime,” the kid said, making a thin, flat line of his lips as though he wished he hadn’t.

Robert W. Hart laughed. A long, dry laugh from deep in his gut, loud enough to warrant an askance look from the bartender and set the kid’s nerves on edge.

Hart gave him back the cigarette and readjusted the glasses on his nose. His eyes moved back to the matchbook on the bar, and he tapped the purple silhouette with his finger, cracking a crooked grin.

“Destiny,” he said.

“Yeah,” the kid agreed, blinking and knitting his brow. “I guess so.”

“No, man—
Destiny.
I wanta see does she still dance there. I got some Jack left on me, haven’t drank all of it yet. Come on, I’m buying. A few more rounds, maybe a lap dance or two. Then we can do what you got to do. No fuss, no muss. Scout’s fucking honor.”

“I wasn’t a Boy Scout.”

“Neither was I. Who gives a shit? Let a dumb fuck get a little something he can’t get at home before he gets his ticket punched, huh?”

Nick tamped out his smoke, nodding at the bartender as he looked at the matchbook.

* * *

She was sitting Indian-style on the couch in the living room in gray sweatpants and a tank top, the television on but the volume way down low. A cup of coffee steamed on the little table beside her, a few magazines and a book on the coffee table in front of her. The book was some tawdry horror paperback, tattered like she’d acquired it used or read it before. A bloody knife crossed over an image of a human skull with the eyeballs still in the sockets, huge and bloodshot and staring without emotion. Her hair was done up, messily, and her nipples pressed against the fabric of her top. Nick noticed that when he came into the room from the kitchen, having entered the same way he did before, and forced himself to move his focus to her face. She blinked, glanced up at him like he belonged there.