David Jackson - Marked

‘Wh-What?’

‘I want you to sing.’

‘Sing? You want me to fuckin’ sing? S-sing what?’

‘Whatever. You choose.’

Wheaton’s mind races. He can’t focus on songs right now.

For his hesitation he receives a slap through the hood.

‘I said, “Sing!”’

‘I–I can’t think. The words won’t come. I can’t-’

‘All right, then. I’ll choose. Sing “White Christmas”.’

‘What? You fucking with me, right? You want this nigger to sing ’bout a white Christmas?’

‘Just do it.’

‘I. . I can’t. I only know the first line. Bill Cosby ain’t exactly my thing, yo.’

‘All right, then. “Jingle Bells”. The chorus, okay? Everybody knows the chorus to “Jingle Bells”.’

‘But. . but it ain’t even Christmas. Why the fuck do you-’

Another slap. ‘Do it! Now!’

‘Aiight! I’m doing it, I’m doing it. . Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. .”’

‘ Louder! ’

‘. . Oh what fun, di-dah-di-dah, on a sumthin’ sumthin’ sleigh, hey!’

‘Again, Lorenze. Even louder. Keep repeating it. Stop and you’re dead, hear?’

Wheaton knows he’s dead anyway. He doesn’t know why he’s singing, but he does it. In truth, he’s glad of it. It takes his mind away from what’s about to happen. He doesn’t want to hear a round being chambered or a safety being flicked off or a hammer being cocked. So he sings. Louder and louder. Sings like he’s trying to fill Carnegie Hall with his tuneless voice. Sings like he really does want this to be Christmas, and he’s standing in the cold air of Washington Square Park, belting out his festive chorus for all to hear, for all to know just how wonderful he feels at this happy, happy time of peace and generosity and good will to all men. Sings like he knows it will-

Where the fuck is that bullet?

He stops singing. Strains to listen through the thick cloth. Hears nothing.

‘Yo,’ he says quietly. He tenses, still expecting the gunshot. When it doesn’t come, he risks raising his voice. ‘Yo, you still there?’

Still nothing.

He dares to move. Lifts his head from the floor first of all. Rotates it in all directions while he tries to detect the slightest sound. Any indication that he is not alone.

Silence.

He rolls onto his side, brings his knees up and manages to push himself up into a sitting position.

‘Hey!’ he calls. ‘Whatchoo doin’? Where you at?’

It takes Wheaton a while to convince himself that his attacker is not still here, playing some kind of cruel joke for which the punchline is a bullet to Wheaton’s brain. And when he eventually does manage to believe it, he still can’t understand what this was all about. Why is he still alive? Was this simply some kind of warning? A message to let him know that he’s not untouchable and can be taken out at any time?

He sits cross-legged in the darkness of his mother’s apartment. The hood still on his head. His hands still bound behind his back.

‘Fuck!’ he says. ‘Fuck you, motherfucker!’

His outburst is fueled by anger, but also by self-loathing. He wishes he had fought back more. He wishes he had been more of a man in the face of death. Above all, he wishes it had been the truth when he told himself he was not afraid.

He was very afraid. He knows it now, and it stings.

He could try denying it again. Try acting the hard man he wants everyone else to see.

But his lie would be betrayed by the tears on his cheeks.

Those, and the large wet patch on his pants.

Doyle pulls the car over. He strips off the leather gloves and drops them onto the black ski mask he has already tossed onto the passenger seat.

It doesn’t rattle him that he’s just terrorized another human being. Lorenze Wheaton hardly enters into that category anyhow. Lorenze Wheaton is a punk. A lowlife. He sells drugs to schoolkids. Rumor has it that he also raped a girl of fifteen, but the cops never managed to make that one stick. So what if he’s just had a taste of the misery he doles out to others?

But of course that’s not the real reason Doyle paid him that little visit. He’s not in the business of setting up as a vigilante. No, something else drew him to Wheaton’s place tonight.

He’d heard on the streets about Wheaton’s feud with Mojo. Heard too that Wheaton had taken to carrying a semi-automatic pistol around with him for protection.

Doyle reaches into his pocket and pulls out the Beretta 92. Wheaton’s gun.

He doesn’t know how dangerous this mission he’s on for Bartok is likely to get. What he does know is that if he needs to shoot someone, this time he’s going to make damn sure he doesn’t use a weapon that can be traced back to him.

Not that it will come to that. Doyle doesn’t plan to shoot anyone.

And don’t his plans always work out?

It’s after two o’clock in the morning when he kicks in the door.

He hopes this will be straightforward. He hopes that Cubo and his girl will be tucked up in bed. Fast asleep. Not expecting any interruptions to their sweet dreams. Doyle will present his most fearsome aspect, wave his gun around, offer up a few simple questions and then get out of there. That’s how it will go.

Sure.

The first thing he sees is Tasha Wilmot. Which is a surprise in itself because he wasn’t expecting to be able to see a damned thing. But he can see Tasha because there is a lamp on in the room. Not only that, but there is some R amp;B playing quietly in the background. And Tasha is stark naked on the sofa. Welcome home, sugar.

And yet Tasha does not scream. Despite the fact that she is unclothed and is looking at a burly man in a ski mask who has just barged uninvited into her apartment and is now pointing a cannon at her face, she does not yell. Doesn’t even attempt to conceal her assets behind a cushion or two. And the reason for this apparent devil-may-care attitude of hers is not bravery or indignation; it is that she is stoned out of her skull. Doyle sees immediately that she can hardly focus on him, and that the only response he’s likely to get from her is some random eye-rolling accompanied by a little drooling.

He wastes no time in racing across to the bedroom, his heart now thumping warnings against his ribcage. If Tasha is awake, then there is every possibility that Cubo is also awake. And if he’s only a little more compos mentis than his girlfriend, he could well be reaching for a weapon of some kind right now.

Doyle shoulders the door open. Flies into the room. Scans the area with gun outstretched in a two-handed combat stance that would be a dead giveaway to any observer that this intruder is probably a cop, ski mask notwithstanding.

But there are no observers here. Except for perhaps those of the six-legged variety. There is a lamp on in this fleapit of a room, but no Cubo. Which leaves only. .

He hears the noise before he gets there. The bathroom. He launches himself at the door with his leg raised. Drives his foot into the area just over the handle. The door practically comes off its hinges as it crashes open. Doyle’s momentum carries him into the room, and for a terrifying moment he wonders whether an entrance like this is the wisest of moves.

He’s found Cubo.

Luckily his quarry doesn’t pose a threat. In fact, he’s probably the least threatening quarry imaginable. For one thing, he’s naked. He also makes size-zero models look obese: every bone in his body is visible through his thin pallid flesh. And his response to Doyle’s invasion is not to come at him with a knife or a gun, but to contemplate jumping out of the window he has just opened. He sits straddling the windowsill, one leg outside, one in, his gaze oscillating between Doyle and the blackness on the other side of that wall.