John Lutz - Kiss

Raffy was buried up to the waist.

Then the armpits.

At last only his head and one shoulder and arm were above the earth.

He waved the arm almost like a surrender flag, then dropped it. He was in agony and losing blood in the grave.

He wasn’t going to climb out.

“Shit!” he groaned. “Look what you done!”

Exhausted, Carver braced his good leg and leaned on the shovel. He gasped, “Where’s Birdie?”

Raffy stared at him with black, pain-glazed eyes and laughed.

“Birdie?” Carver said again.

Raffy spat at him.

Carver’s upper-body strength was probably as great as Raffy’s. He raised the shovel high and brought the honed blade down hard in a chopping motion on Raffy’s hand, leaning all his weight into it. He flinched at the chonk! as a finger was severed.

“Where’s Birdie?” he asked again, surprised by the calmness in his voice. The detached finger lay like a pale slug in the loose earth.

Raffy stared in shock at the bleeding stump on his hand. Didn’t answer. A trickle of blood writhed like a snake down his arm.

Crouched on his good knee where he’d dropped after his effort, almost in a sitting position, Carver drew back the shovel as if to bring it down on the back of Raffy’s neck.

And Raffy winced. Human at last.

He said, “She’s with a friend of mine. Melanie Star.”

“Address?” Carver said, not moving the shovel.

“Corner of Delta and Citrus. Old brick apartment building. Melanie’s on the first floor.”

Carver said, “You’re a dead man,” but he lowered the shovel.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“You’re headed for Raiford Prison or the electric chair,” Carver said. “If not the chair, I’ll kill you soon as you hit the street after you do your stretch of time. You either fry and die, come out and die, or you’re in for the rest of your years, and that’s a kinda death. It’s death whichever way. I won’t forget about you.”

“Guess you won’t.”

“You believe I mean it?”

“Yeah, I believe it. You got something to put on this finger, stop it from bleeding?”

Carver worked his way to his feet. Using the shovel as a cane, he limped away from Raffy.

“You gonna leave me here?” Raffy called. “We can work something out, you know? Motherfucker, I’m hurt!”

Carver opened the door to Raffy’s white Cadillac and tossed the shovel inside. He remembered Raffy reaching in and turning off the idling engine, so he wasn’t surprised that the key was in the ignition switch rather than in a pocket of Raffy’s shorts and buried.

“Carver! Listen, man! Please! C’mon back!”

Gripping the smooth car roof for support, Carver lowered himself in behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

Raffy screamed.

Dirt and rocks pelted the insides of the fenders as Carver drove away.

Half a mile down the highway he heard sirens, and a bright yellow fire engine passed him going the other way, red and blue lights flashing and chromed pumping equipment bright with reflected color. More lights over the rise, and a sheriff’s car swished past behind the fire truck.

The yodeling wails of their sirens faded behind Carver like the distant baying of hounds on the hunt.

On the straightaways, he used all the speed there was in Raffy’s Caddie.

Sanderson’s Drugstore was a stop on the way. Carver left the Cadillac double-parked on Ocean Drive with the lights on and the engine idling as he limped inside with the shovel. The girl behind the checkout counter stopped chewing her gum. Customers stared. A white-haired man holding a bottle of mouthwash backed away from Carver, almost knocking over a rotating rack of paperback novels. The rack squealed as if in surprise and did half a turn, to the mystery section. Carver thought, Stranger than fiction.

He made his way directly to the display of canes and crutches and quickly selected a wooden cane, leaning on it to test strength and flexibility, taking a few steps to make sure it was the correct length. Good enough, if not perfect.

He left the shovel leaning against the shelves and hobbled back to the front of the drugstore and the checkout counter. Tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.

The girl at the cash register was unconsciously working her jaws again, red lips parted so her purplish wad of chewing gum was visible. But there was awe and fear in her eyes as they locked on the dirt-stained madman who’d wandered in with a shovel and was buying a cane.

“I was digging in my garden,” Carver said. “Cane broke and I had to get a replacement right away.”

The girl nodded and said, “Oh.” She didn’t halfway believe that one, but she wasn’t going to argue about it. She counted out Carver’s change and gave it to him, withdrawing her hand as quickly as possible, as if her fingers were burned.

He knew she was watching him as he limped outside and climbed back in the Caddie. As he settled into the seat he caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror and knew why the checkout girl had stared and feared. The curly gray hair around his ears was mussed; his tanned face was darkened with dirt including a black glob on his bald head that reminded him of Gorbachev’s birthmark; his eyes seemed a paler blue and were direct and wild. He’d be afraid of a man with eyes like that.

As he drove the rest of the way to the corner of Delta and Citrus, he smoothed back his hair and then wiped his shirtsleeve over his face. Checked his image in the mirror again. An improvement had been worked. He looked less like a maniac and more like a chimney sweep.

There was only one apartment building where Delta Avenue crossed Citrus. Neither street was busy. The corner was in the depressed part of town where Raffy had pursued Carver’s car and taken a shot at him. A steamy low fog had moved in, and the streetlights bending overhead glowed in brilliant swirling hazes that didn’t reach the ground.

Carver parked half a block down on Citrus, got out of the Cadillac, and walked back toward the apartment. His arms still ached from shoveling, and the sweat-smeared dirt that covered them was beginning to itch.

The building was a six-family, gloomy structure with two stories. A light gleamed faintly above the entrance, near where the bricks were darkly stained from a neglected gutter leak. The windows had shades but not drapes, and a few of them had broken panes with cardboard taped over them. The rent here had to be low and the roaches probably ran the place. Melanie Star must have thought she was in paradise when she stayed with Raffy in Executive Tower. The hitch to that Eden was that she had to sleep with the serpent. Or maybe that was what appealed to her.

Carver pushed open the heavy, brown-enameled door and entered the vestibule. Somebody had swished a dirty mop over the cracked, hexagonal-tiled floor not long ago; a soapy ammonia odor lingered in the sweltering air.

He saw “M. Star” printed in the slot above the mailbox for unit 1-B. Folded religious fliers stuck out of all six locked mailboxes. Carver pulled one out and glanced at it. Prayer was the solution to all problems, it proclaimed. At the bottom was the name of a church and a form to send in if you wanted to make a donation. He tucked the flier back in the mailbox.

He decided to try the rear door of 1-B, and he quietly left the vestibule.

Carver had to take only a single step up a flight of rickety wooden stairs to be on the landing in front of Melanie Star’s back door. There was a rusty barbecue cooker tucked in a corner against the wooden rail. A can of charcoal starter lay on its side nearby. The door was paneled and had four small windows in it. A heavy orange curtain hung loosely over the windows, but enough illumination filtered through to suggest there was a light on in the kitchen.