David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

“I don’t want it to do anything,” Chewy said.

Frank tucked it in his waistband and pulled his shirttail over it. “Then we’ll keep it out of sight. Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Chewy said. “Sure.”

Mooch eyed the bottle of petroleum ether on the bedstand, then turned his stare toward his arm, running his fingers over the skin. Chewy elbowed him.

“Stop it.”

“What?”

Chewy sighed. His face darkened into a frown, only to soften a moment later. His eyes warmed. Frank inferred from this that the kid had lost track of what he was thinking.

“Can we get more of this?” Chewy asked eventually.

Frank shrugged. “Sure. Maybe. I can find out,” he said, improvising. He felt angry, for reasons he couldn’t quite place. Looking around the room, he took comfort in the fact it wasn’t pale blue. Robin’s egg blue, he remembered, thinking of the tool wagon, the suggestion of children’s things the color called to mind. Then despite himself, the other memory- deeper, sadder, more horrible- it started moving. Sliding along the floor of his mind, it dragged after it a slag of cold blood. The monster was coming out now. The monster with a boy’s face, it was here. Again.

Mooch looked up wearily from his arm, looking ready to cry. He put his hands to his temples and squeezed.

“Goddamn,” he said quietly.

“This is dangerous,” Chewy agreed.

“What’s dangerous?” Frank asked, snapping to.

“Too much candy in the house,” Chewy said, staring at what remained of the eight ball on the bedstand.

“You gotta know how to handle your drugs,” Mooch agreed. He’d begun fingering his arm again.

Frank nodded toward the pipe. “Another go?” He wanted something to do with his hands, something else to think about. His heart was pumping like mad but his skin felt clammy. He dampened another cotton ball in rum and gripped it with the tongs, lit it with his cigarette lighter and held it out. Chewy put his lips to the pipe stem and inhaled heavily, closing his eyes.

“How’s Shel doin’?” Mooch asked.

Frank froze. Kill him, a voice said. No, hey, don’t. He waved the tongs until the cotton ball went out.

“She’s hit middle age,” he said finally. “She’s depressed.”

In unison the twins nodded their comprehension.

“Hope I look that good,” Mooch said. He looked up from his arm. “I don’t mean, you know, look good, like… I’m not out to bone her or nothing. Not that I wouldn’t, I mean, she’s a fox, Frank, an ace old lady, no fooling, but…” He sighed from the effort of getting his thoughts in order.

“State your business, Mooch,” Frank said.

“He didn’t mean anything, Frank,” Chewy said. “Don’t get mad, all right?” Trying to move things along, he added, “Can we get more of this?”

Frank turned his attention from the one to the other. He was sweating. “Keep the rest,” he said. “You can do me back.”

Chewy looked at Frank as though trying to discern him across a distance. “Sure,” he said. “Thank you.”

“I remember,” Mooch murmured, scrunching his face, “the first time I met Shel. Up at the house. She’s got a killer smile. I mean, a nice smile.” He waved his hands, to dispel a confusion. “Kinda smile that makes you feel wanted. Wanted as in ‘liked,’ I mean. Not wanted as in ‘by the FBI.’ ” He squeezed his temples again, to unscramble his thought pattern, then sighed. “You got a first-rate old lady, Frank.”

Chewy elbowed his brother again and whispered, “Shut… up.”

Frank said, “Yeah. Almost perfect.”

“Perfect,” Mooch repeated. “Dead on.”

Chewy licked his lips and said for the third time, “We’ll probably want to buy some more of this.” It came out very loud.

Mooch stood up, wavering on his feet. “I gotta pee.”

He shuffled from the room like a ghost. It’s no longer in your hands, Frank thought, remembering his flash of insight at the marina. What happens, happens. Do it right. Frank turned to Chewy. Something must have shown in his eyes. As soon as Chewy looked up, he said, “Don’t be mad. Okay?”

“Who says I’m mad?”

Chewy chuckled miserably and gestured as though to say, Get real.

Frank nodded toward the stereo. “How about some tunes?”

“Don’t be mad.”

“Stop saying that.”

Frank got up and went to the cassette rack, checking for anything loud. Finding a tape by a group called Stick, he slipped it in and jacked the volume on a tune called “No Groovy.” A spoon in a water glass rattled clear across the room.

Chewy shouted, “Hey…”

Frank drew the Ruger from his waistband, bracing his right hand with his left. He shot three quick rounds. Chewy lunged back into the couch, legs twisting up. He got fish-mouthed, sucking for air. His chest convulsed. The gun turned warm in Frank’s hands, which were shaking. He expected more blood.

Mooch hit the doorway yelling, “What the…”

Frank pivoted, charging at him. The next four rounds in the clip caught the boy point-blank. Mooch spun back trying to grip the door frame, hit the wall, then slid down. Frank noticed there was more blood this time.

He turned down the stereo. The gun was hot, he set it on the floor to cool. Don’t be mad, he thought. I didn’t mean anything.

Chewy’s body stopped twitching. To force back his vomit, Frank held his breath, held it till his head ached. It’s not like I had a choice, he thought. Out of my hands.

The next thing he knew he lay curled in a ball on the living room floor. His skin was cold with sweat. How much time had passed? It was still dark outside. He looked up at the furniture with something like envy. It sat there in the room so peacefully.

A nameless pressure lifted him to his feet and guided him back upstairs where, in a state of abstracted terror, he looked at what he’d done. This is not the beach at Baja, he thought.

Move, a voice said. Finish it.

Inspired by an impulse he’d not foreseen, he dug a pair of socks out of a drawer and put one on each hand. He went around wiping everything, even the door downstairs, the banister, then went back to the bedroom and trashed it. Make it look like a burn, he told himself, an inner voice he barely recognized as his own. Do it right.

Look for money.

The twins weren’t all that clever. They kept their stash in a wad, stuffed inside a throw pillow. Thirteen hundred and change. Finish it. He went through the rest of the house, throwing down every picture, dumping out baskets, checking the flour tins, cereal boxes, the bread hamper. He was light-headed and crying. In a pickle jar he found another grand wrapped inside a condom. He broke the jar on the floor, pocketed the money and left the fridge door open. He found scattered bills in their wallets, a few more in a magazine, an envelope, a hatband. It has to be thorough, he realized, to be convincing. He found two quarter-gram bundles stashed in an empty cassette case; he dusted the bodies with the powder. Make it look like honest-to-God revenge, he thought.

Too much candy in the house.

He picked up the gun, put it away, and collected all seven spent shell casings, reaching far beneath the couch to claim the last. Chewy’s body lay there, face to the ceiling, one leg tucked under. Blood caked most of his T-shirt now, the sofa cushion had soaked up the rest. The dusting of cocaine resembled sugar. Frank pulled the socks off his hands and crossed the room, reaching out to touch Chewy’s eye with his fingertip.

He thought of a boy. Not a monster, a boy not yet three years old, a precious boy, murdered by a drug-crazed half-wit.

Frank withdrew his finger. He’d already been planning to cut the twins’ share down, whittle it to zip, and though he expected them to whine, he doubted they’d have made enough noise to squirrel the plan. He could have strung them along, told them another deal was on the way, bigger, fatter, they were his favorite boys. Then poof, gone, with Shel beside him, the twins wondering where their money went. It could’ve worked. There was no need to do this. But it just took on a life of its own, not some wild improvisation but more the work of some invisible hand: the gun in the trunk, the eight ball, the constant niggling horseshit about Shel.