F. Paul Wilson - Infernal

He glanced at his watch: 7:45 . Their reservation had been for seven thirty. Jesse went on at eight.

"We should be waiting for my dad instead of my brother."

Gia took his hand and gave a gentle squeeze. "I wish that too." Tears glistened on her lids. "God, I can't believe…"

"Yeah. I know." He looked around. Still no sign of Tom. "You know, if he doesn't show by the time we finish these, maybe we should take off."

"He's your brother, Jack."

Jack fiddled with the paper napkin that had come with the beer.

"Yeah, well, we never got along growing up and I don't see us getting along any better as adults."

"What did he do to get you so down on him?"

Jack thought of the first line of The Cask of Amontillado .

"If I may paraphrase Poe, 'The thousand injuries of Tom I had borne as I best could…'"

"Oh come on now, aren't we exaggerating just a little?"

He didn't want to tell her that Tom was the most self-centered human being he had ever known. Jack imagined him being pissed on 9/11 because the fall of the World Trade towers had preempted his favorite Tuesday night TV shows.

Okay. A little harsh. Tom would have been as aghast as everyone else.

He hoped.

"He was ten years older and when he wasn't ignoring me he was hassling me. A little example. I was maybe eleven and I loved pistachios. As I remember, they were all red back then. Anyway, I didn't like to eat them one at a time. I liked a bunch at a time. So I'd shell a couple of dozen and then gobble them in one big bite. I remember it was summer, Tom was home from college, and I was sitting at the kitchen counter, doing the work of accumulating a pile of shelled nuts. Tom breezed along, grabbed them, shoved them into his face, and walked on. If he'd done it as a tease it would be one thing, but he acted as if he hadn't the slightest doubt about his right to them or that anyone would refuse him anything—as if I'd been shelling them for him."

"And what did you do?"

"Well, they were already in his mouth so I didn't want them back, and he was twice my size so I couldn't attack him. And I was too old to go whining to my folks. So I had to let it pass."

"Since when do you let things pass?"

"I was a kid, so I did. Then he did it again."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah. Uh-oh. I was insane. Once was bad enough. Twice was intolerable. I decided to put a stop to it."

"Do I want to hear this?"

Jack smiled. "Of course you do. So I went to Mr. Canelli, this sweet old Italian guy up the street who had the town's best lawn in his front yard and a big vegetable garden in the back. I asked him if I could buy a couple of his hottest— hottest peppers."

Gia nodded. "I see where this is going."

"Need I say more?"

"Well, did it work?"

"Oh, it worked. Mr. Canelli could eat hot peppers like candy, but he said he had one tepin plant that produced peppers so hot he could only use a tiny bit at a time. Two or three times hotter than the red habanero. He gave me some—half a dozen tiny red things. I crushed them and coated about twenty shelled pistachios with the juice."

"Ouch."

"Ouch to the hundredth power." Jack laughed at the memory. "Tom came by, snatched them up, stuffed them into his mouth, and kept moving—for about five steps. Then it hit him."

"Did he turn red?"

"Red? Ever see someone washing out his mouth with a garden hose—for half an hour? It was two days before his tongue was something he wanted in his mouth."

Gia laughed. "Now I've got to meet him."

Jack sobered. "I don't know if you should. I'm still not sure we should even be here."

She frowned. "Where else should we be? Home? Doing what?"

Good question. The options were to go home alone or hang around Gia's house and be morose.

"Wallow?"

"You really want to do that?"

He shrugged. He didn't know what he wanted. "I guess not, but being here seems somehow disrespectful… almost sacrilegious."

Gia shook her head. "I didn't know your father, but from what you've told me I can't see him wanting you to do that."

"You're right. He wouldn't."

"And besides, you promised this fellow Jesse Bighead—"

"Jesse Roy —Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois."

She made a face. "He doesn't have hydrocephalus or anything like that, does he?"

"No. It's a bluesman thing to have a tag with your name. 'Blind' seems to be the most popular: Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, and the guy with the double whammy, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Then there's Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Gatemouth Brown, T-Bone Walker, Pinetop Perkins—the list goes on and on."

"But how do you wind up being called 'Bighead'?"

"I asked him that once and he told me it was his mother's doing. He'd been a big baby and whenever anyone would mention childbirth, his mother would go on about what an awful time she had passing his head."

"Think I'm sorry I asked."

"He may have got the 'Bighead' from his mother, but not the rest. She named him William Sutton, and he grew up as Willie Sutton."

"Like the safecracker?" Gia shook her head. "That might be interesting, but Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois is definitely more picturesque." She nudged Jack with her elbow. "Still not going to tell me how you know him?"

"Told you: I did a fix-it for him a few years back."

It had been a simple fix, but Bighead had been impressed, and had never forgotten.

"Which tells me nothing. It's not as if you're a priest and he told you something in confession."

"Yes, it is."

Jack looked around again. Where the hell was Tom?

7

When will I learn to keep my big yap shut? Tom thought as he extracted himself from the cab. I should be back at Joe O's, feasting on John L. Tyleski's tab.

Instead he was going to get stuck with a three-meal bill in a midtown restaurant.

He slammed the cab door and looked around. Jack had given him a West 42nd Street address but nothing here looked like a restaurant. The Lion King … the biggest McDonald's he'd ever seen with a huge, Broadway-style flashing marquee… Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum… all so different from what he remembered.

Back in his late teens and early twenties, this block had been lined with grindhouse theaters showing grade-Z sleaze.

Then he spotted it: a marquee with B. B. KING scrawled across the top in big red letters. The place looked like a converted movie theater. Probably—no, most likely—one of those grindhouses from the earlier days. Even had a ticket booth out front.

But Jack had said this was the place. Lucille's—anyone who knew anything knew that B. B. King called his guitar Lucille—had to be inside.

If nothing else, the music should be good.

And he was dying to see what sort of floozy Jack had hooked up with. Maybe she had a friend…

Tom entered to the left of the ticket booth and found himself in a small souvenir shop. He asked the T-shirted girl behind the counter for the restaurant and followed her point down a wide circular staircase. He spotted "Lucille's Grill" in red neon over a doorway and walked through. Before the receptionist could ask about a reservation, he spotted Jack and a blonde at the bar.

He pointed. "I'm with them."

He approached from the rear. He couldn't see the woman's face, but he noticed that she dressed on the conservative side, and that her short blond hair did not appear to have originated in a bottle.

Surprise, surprise. Jack had latched onto a babe with a little class.

"Sorry, I'm late," he said.

Jack and the woman turned. Jack's expression remained neutral, but the woman smiled and Tom felt as if he'd run face first into an invisible wall.

That smile, those blue eyes, that face and the way her hair framed it and curved into feathery little wings… it seemed as if he'd stepped into some kind of cosmic shampoo commercial where everything dropped into slow motion as he approached her. He tingled, he flushed, he buzzed with an instantaneous chemical reaction.