Roman
Six months, six goddamned months, six blind, useless, fuckin’ wasted months . . . I lean down and growl in the man’s face, growl like a true madman. He leans back, making a whining noise, almost falling off his chair. For the last three of those six months I’ve been right here, Carson City, which means I’ve been able to keep an eye on Lily . . . but that does little to calm my anger. I haven’t been able to talk to her, ’cause I don’t know if some bastard is following me or not. Even when I’m staking out her apartment, I have to park up the fucking street and watch the entrance, so if anyone is watching me, they have no clue what building I’m staking out. Six months . . . anger boils within me and I backhand the man across the jaw.
His name is Carson, Carson of Carson as he’s known, and it’s rumored that he was right-hand to Darius until recently. He’s short, wide-shouldered, thickly muscled, with a face which is one half scarred, acid-stained flesh and the other patchy black beard. After I hit him, I sit him upright, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“You’ve clearly had a run in with the Acid Man,” I say, nodding at his face.
My voice echoes around the hillside, but nobody will interrupt us. We’re in the middle of nowhere, one of those stretches of rock on Kit Carson nobody’ll be scouting out at three in the morning. I’ve got the headlamps of my car on, lighting up Carson, bloody-faced, bound to the rickety wooden chair.
“I told you, man . . .”
“You haven’t told me shit.” I growl, and hit him again.
My patience wore out months ago. My patience wore out when Boss lost his re-election and was kicked out of office, and so had no use for me anymore. My patience wore out when, after months of searching, I still don’t know anything except that Darius is missing a pinky finger, which is a useless piece of information. My patience wore out when, for these past months, I’ve watched the mother of my child grow from afar and haven’t been able to touch her.
Carson sputters blood, coughs, and lolls in the seat. I take my bottle of water and splash some in his face.
“I know all about you, Carson,” I say, leaning forward, bringing my face close to his so he can see the rage in my eyes. “I know all about how you held those girls down in Uganda. I know all about how you liked to take the ones he was done with. You were his fuckin’ lackey up until less than a year ago. You must know something. You must. You rapist fuck.”
I make to hit him again, but then stop myself. I can’t let anger take me. If I keep hitting him, I might kill him, and then my only lead will disappear.
“Let me tell you something,” I say. “I’m in this for myself now. I’m not getting paid for this. If you’ve heard of me—and if you worked with Darius, of course you fuckin’ have—then you know how seriously I’m taking this. So I’m going to ask you once more, and then I’m getting the acid. Tell me where he is, where he last was, what he’s up to these days. Fuckin’ give me something.”
When I mention acid, he begins to shiver, rocking in the chair, vibrating against his bindings. But he clamps his mouth shut and doesn’t say a word.
“Fine,” I mutter.
I walk to my car, around to the trunk, making sure to do it slowly to draw it out for him. It doesn’t matter, ’cause no matter what he tells me, this man is dying tonight. Rapist, murderer, psychopath, thinking he can come to Carson as some kind of joke because it matches his name. No fuckin’ way. He’s a dead man. But he doesn’t know that. He still has hope.
I take the bottle of Gatorade, label peeled away, from the trunk and return to Carson. When he sees it, be begins mumbling. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Come on, man. I don’t fucking know!”
“Do you remember how it felt, Carson?” I ask, sitting on my haunches and looking up into his face. “Do you remember how your flesh sizzled?” I heft the bottle of Gatorade. “Do you really want to go another round with this stuff?”
Carson of Carson literally chose this city because it happened to match his name. I learned from one of my contacts that after the Acid Man disfigured his face and he decided that he wanted to settle down, he decided on this place as a twisted joke. And so he fled here, with warped glee in his heart, thinking he’d gotten away with the rape and the torture and the murder of innocents. And now here I am, brandishing what he thinks is acid at his face. I see the effect it has on him, as though his layers of glee and safety are being peeled away with acidic efficiency. He turns from an evil, scary-looking rapist murderer to scared child. Perhaps the sort of change that’d provoke pity is some men.
Not me.
“Do you remember how it bubbled, Carson? Do you remember how it felt, knowing that your flesh was going to be eaten away once the bubbling had stopped? I bet that was the worst part, wasn’t it? Not the pain, but thinking about what was going to happen after it was all gone.”
Carson shivers, his lips trembling, tears beading in his eyes. Perhaps another man—maybe even another killer—would feel a pang of conscience at this. Perhaps another man would feel that they had gone too far. But you have to remind yourself, when looking into the eyes of these devils, that they are master deceivers and experts at playing angels. He shivers now, but if I let him go, within the week he would be attacking some woman, causing someone pain.
“I’m going to give you three seconds,” I tell him. “Usually I give ten, but I don’t reckon I want to talk with you that long.”
“If I told you anything, he’d kill me—”
“Three . . .”
“He’d kill me, he’d kill me!”
“Two . . .”
“He’d kill me, man!”
“What do you think I’m going to do!” I roar, standing up and looming over him. “You have nothing to gain by withholding this information, Carson. Nothing at all.”
“Wait . . .” Carson looks up, acid-chewed eye squinted and inquisitive. “You’re going to—to kill me no matter what?”
“You’ve raped children,” is my answer, the only answer I need to give. Does this bastard really think he can do what he’s done and just walk away?
“Then why should I tell you anything?”
I gesture with the Gatorade. “Take a guess.”
He swallows. I see it, a tennis ball of phlegm shifting down his throat, making his Adam’s apple jut out of his skin. “I hate Darius,” he says. “Of course I do. He did this to me. How couldn’t I? But do you know what I hate even more?” The boy-like mask drops from his face, and he sneers the next words. “Fucking heroes like you. You think you’re so much better than us, don’t you? Think you’re such a fuckin’ hero? How’s that, again? How the fuck does that work? We kill people—or help other people kill people—we get paid. You kill people, you get paid. How the fuck is that any different?”
“You can’t believe that,” I say.
But he does, I can tell. He believes it one-hundred percent.
I try one last time, with, “I’ve never raped a child, Carson.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Carson shrugs as much as the bindings will let him. “You ought to try it some time.”
I drop the Gatorade bottle, walk around to the trunk of the car, grab my pistol, and return to him. Laying the barrel against his head, I growl, “Why are you always so fuckin’ perverted? Why can’t you just be killers, or arms-dealers? Why has there always got to be some fuckin’ problem with you in there.” I jab his forehead with the pistol.
Carson closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “We do what we want, Roman. We’re free. Can you say the same?”
“I do what I want, too,” I say. “For example, I want to blow your brains out.”
I pull the trigger, sending his brains flying out of his skull, toppling the chair. I sigh as he lies there, limp and releasing his bowels, sending his stink up into the air. It’s been the same with every man who’s worked for Darius. Darius has been careful in choosing who he works with, it seems, making sure they are as depraved as him, making sure they have some dark inner place he can tap into and use, making sure they enjoy the evils of the world. I don’t really want to give a man like this a burial, but I’m a professional and I’ve made a mess.
When the cleanup is done, it’s early morning and the sun is beginning to rise. I strip down in the early morning sunlight and wash myself with bottled water, burn the clothes I was wearing, and then climb behind the wheel of the pick-up in fresh clothes. I make my way over the mountain toward the city. As I drive, I grip the steering wheel, staring at my white knuckles, thinking over all the bullshit I’ve been through these past six months, all the dead-ends I’ve been met with at all turns. It doesn’t help that Boss has abandoned me to my own devices, that I’m out here on my own now. The wild fuckin’ west, with no sheriff and no marshal and no backup, just me against an international arms dealer. It sounds like a joke when I think on it like this.
Once I’ve rejoined the road, I drive toward Lily’s apartment building. This pains me, too. All I want to do right now is park the pick-up proudly outside her building, walk up the stairs, and hold her in my arms. I’ve watched that bump of hers grow over the months with a longing in my body stronger than any I’ve ever felt, a primordial longing, the longing of a wolf wanting to protect his family. I want to run my hand over that bump and argue with her about baby names. Me, wanting to argue with a woman about baby names . . . it’s ridiculous, except that it isn’t, not anymore. I still don’t know if I’d be any good as a father, but I know at least I could make Lily feel less alone.
I park down the street, watching as the early-morning workers in their overalls and suits and pencil skirts climb behind the wheels of their cars and get ready for another day. I watch as a few drunks stumble into Lily’s apartment building, and resist the urge to charge after them. I want to grab them by the shoulder, spin them around, scream in their faces: “What business do you have living in the same building as the mother of my child?” I glance in my rear-view down the street, out the front window past Lily’s apartment, wondering if it would truly be that dangerous to reveal myself to her. What are the chances, really, that somebody is watching me?
I let that question hang in my mind, going over the possibilities, and decide that I really can’t know. And the fact that I can’t know is a problem. I should be able to know. I’m an expert at following people and usually I’m confident in my ability to recognize when I’m being followed. But not with Darius. I admit to myself, alone here in the pick-up with my woman somewhere in that graffiti-covered building a million miles away, that Darius might be better at this than me. Darius might be more well-trained than me. Darius might be more lethal than me. The admission causes me to punch down on the steering wheel, bruising my fist.
I have to leave Carson soon. My next lead is back in Vegas. Not a strong lead, but a lead nonetheless. Soon I’ll have to leave Lily, and the baby. Maybe when I come back she won’t be leaving the apartment with a belly the size of a beach ball; maybe she’ll be holding a child in her arms. She’ll have to sort out pushchairs and cots and all that shit herself. The thought of her struggling to put together a flat-packed cot makes me feel like the biggest prick who’s ever lived.
“Time to go,” I mutter, taking my hand from the wheel and turning the key in the ignition.