Payback (13 page)

There was no fear inside me. Not an ounce.

The weight of the gun inside the bag was a comfort. That alone should have scared me to death.

Trolley

T
HE
LATE
-
NIGHT
downtown streets were dimmed by a layer of fog rolling in off the bay. The fog billowed across the city, pressing cool against my skin, muting streetlights and deadening sound. I had not dressed for the damp ocean air, and I shivered under my thin shirt. My baseball cap, which I now pulled low over my forehead, kept my head warm, which was one small blessing. The backpack hung from my shoulder, and I hugged it in front of me for warmth. The gun inside felt hard against my stomach. I longed to reach inside and clutch the weapon in my hand but didn’t dare. Still, I was comforted knowing it was there within reach if I needed it.

Respectable citizens had long since barred their doors against the fog, but the homeless were out in force, settled in for the night on street corners and tucked into doorways. They were hunched inward for warmth, huddled together singly or in groups, many covered with plastic drop cloths or ratty blankets to ward off the moisture in the air. As I passed, empty eyes peered out at me, but no pleading voices accosted me, no dirty hands reached out to plead for change—a dime, a quarter, a buck. Maybe these people thought I was one of their own. Or maybe they thought I was as crazy or as downtrodden as they were, walking these streets alone in the fog without even a jacket on my back.

The hour was late. Long past midnight. Traffic was light. Occasional sharp sounds split the foggy hush. The crash of a bottle breaking in a gutter. A car horn in the distance. A sharp howl of laughter from some woman, buried under rags, perhaps, cowering behind a rusted shopping cart, making love to her equally homeless partner or sharing a joke as they passed a bottle back and forth to ward off the evening chill or to wash away the bitterness of their wasted existence.

Like I should talk. My existence wasn’t exactly riding high at the moment either.

What the hell was I doing out here? Did I honestly think I would run head-on into the three animals who killed Spence and left me for dead? Did I think I would pull my trusty snubnose whatever-the-hell-it-was out of the backpack and blow them away like Dirty Harry?

I shook my head, laughing at myself, and walked on. The damp air was making my injured arm throb like a toothache. Especially the fingers. I wondered if I had removed the cast too soon. Should I have waited? Should I have at least had the common sense to let a doctor do it? The damn thing had been off my arm for three weeks now, and still the pain at times was almost unbearable.

I tucked my aching arm under the backpack, offering it as much protection from the damp as I could, and continued to walk. It felt good to stretch my legs after all the time I had spent cooped up in the house, afraid to go anywhere, afraid to rejoin the world. And before that—the weeks I had spent lying on that hospital bed, unmoving, unknowing. For all intents and purposes as dead on the outside as I felt on the inside.

Roaming the foggy streets, I had time to consider what I should do now that certain aspects of my life had been irreparably altered. I was no longer married. I was out of work. I had absolutely no desire to find another job. And because Spence and I had shown a little common sense and married legally a year earlier, I really didn’t
have
to find a job right away.

Being married at the time of my spouse’s death meant our finances were already arranged. What was Spence’s now became mine. No taxes need be paid. No family members could move in and try to take what was Spence’s at the time of his death. And in all fairness, no one in Spence’s family had attempted to do such a thing. I had to give them credit for that.

I also gave them credit for having enough sense to know I wanted nothing further to do with them. Not for a while, at least. And probably never. Even Janie would admit it was better this way. The last thing they needed was for me to be there in their presence every waking moment to remind them of the son and brother they no longer had.

Lost in my thoughts, the sudden roar of a trolley screaming past not more than six inches in front of my face sent my heart shooting into my throat. In my shock, I toppled, almost fell, and a young man standing next to me clutched my shirt collar and yanked me back before I could tumble under the iron wheels of the train rumbling past.

The man was young, black, and amused. I shook him off, then immediately thanked him for saving my life.

He grunted, picked my hat off the sidewalk, plopped it back on my head, and said, “Dumbass. You should watch where you’re going,” then turned and walked away.

The long line of trolley cars screeched to a stop in front of me. I fumbled in my pants pocket for change, turned to a kiosk beside the tracks, and purchased a ticket. With nothing better to do, I stepped on board the red car, repositioning my hat, readjusting my pride.

The car was empty. Not a soul in sight. I plopped my ass down on the hard plastic seat, and a moment later, the trolley lurched into motion. I didn’t know where it was headed until I looked up at the sign by the door leading to the car ahead. I was on the Blue Line. Final destination San Ysidro, the US/Mexico border crossing, and all stops in-between.

What the hell was I doing? Then I thought at least I was out of the fog. At the next stop, or maybe the stop after that, I’d just debark and wait for the return trolley to carry me back to the city. I wondered if I was beginning to show signs of irrational thinking, and the answer to that rhetorical question was so blatantly obvious, I had to grin.

Then a young man stepped through the connecting doors leading from the car ahead.

The minute I saw his eyes, I felt the grin fall from my face.

He wasn’t one of the men I sought. At least I didn’t think he was. But he was the same
breed
of young man. Latino, obviously raised in poverty, with the same cruel glint in the eyes, the same uncaring take on the world around him. The same anger so obviously boiling inside him you could almost feel the searing heat of it pouring off of him. I could sense his anger in the cocky tilt of his head, the reckless, leonine, predatory way he moved across the trolley floor.

His cold eyes were aimed solely at me. Every ounce of his attention had been trained on me from the very moment the young man stepped through the connecting door from the car ahead.

And why wouldn’t it be? After all, he and I were the only people in the car.

The moment I truly realized we were alone, I also realized the danger I was in. The trolley windows were black where they looked out into the night; the lights inside were dim. There were no witnesses, no fellow passengers, and even the driver was five or six cars away. If there was an attendant roaming around checking tickets, he wasn’t close enough to be of assistance if things started going wrong.

Which is exactly where things immediately went.

The young man walked directly toward me. He was a handsome kid. Tall. Kind of beefy. He wore cargo shorts and a San Diego Zoo sweatshirt that had seen better days. His legs were strong and hairy, his hands huge. His greasy black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, anchored by a leather string tied snug to the back of his head. He had rings on every finger, even his thumbs. Cheap rings. One was made simply of silver wire bound several times around his finger.

He stopped a few feet from me and stood there, leaning from a passenger strap, staring down at me sitting in the last seat looking back at him. His large hand laid itself across his crotch, and he shifted the weight of his cock beneath the shorts while a teasing grin spread his lips apart, displaying neglected teeth. He explored his yellow teeth with the tip of his tongue as he continued to rub his crotch, which appeared to have grown plumper.

The fucker was getting a hard-on.

“I’m horny,” he said with a vicious smirk. “You look like a cocksucker to me. Maybe you can solve my little problem.”

I slouched comfortably into my seat and stared right back at him. “So it’s little, is it?”

His vicious smirk turned into a nasty leer. He took a step closer and released his crotch to grab two hand straps, one in each hand. He sort of hung there in front of me, hemming me in, swaying with the motion of the trolley car thrumming over the rails. “What did you say,
pendejo
?”

I clutched the backpack a little closer to my chest, continuing to stare up into his face. I spoke a little louder, as if purposely making up for the fact that the man in front of me was either deaf or dense. “I asked you if you had a little bitty dick. You seemed to be worried about it.”

He blinked, then cast his eyes around the empty car as if trying to come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t afraid of him. Dropping his eyes back to me, he cocked his head to the side, struggling to figure me out.

For the first time, his attention seemed to focus on the backpack in my lap.

“What’s in the bag, bitch?” he asked.

But before I could answer, his hand shot out like a rattlesnake, and his strong fingers clamped themselves around my throat. I gasped for air, and he smiled to finally see a flash of fear on my face.

But I wasn’t
all
fear. I still had enough anger to go around.

When he worked his thumb into the corner of my mouth, I clamped down on it with my teeth, and at the same time, my foot made contact with his balls. His eyes popped open wide, and he released my throat.

His face grew the color of adobe bricks, and he gasped for a breath of air after my unexpected kick in the nuts. The next thing I knew, he had fished a switchblade out of his trouser pocket, and flicking it open with a tap of his thumb, he pushed the blade against my cheek hard enough to draw blood.

I froze.

“What’s the matter,” he asked, still seething and looking a little green around the edges after having my size twelve Reeboks buried in his testicles. “Lose your sense of humor?”

I didn’t answer. I continued to hug the backpack against my chest with one arm. The other hand, unbeknownst to my attacker, was in the bag. I could feel the teeth of the zipper touching each side of my arm. Inside, the gun was cold metal in my grasp. My finger was on the trigger. The barrel pointed directly at Santa Anna, or whoever the hell he thought he was. If he was expecting another Alamo, he was in for a rude awakening.

For the first time since Spence’s death, my anger was totally out of control, and I knew it. I didn’t fear this clown at all, and I think the clown was beginning to realize that fact. I had to admit he looked a little nonplussed about it too. I guess he wasn’t used to having his powers of intimidation fall short of the intended reactions from his prey.

“Still want that blow job?” I asked, and the knife dug deeper into my cheek. I could feel a rivulet of blood flow down my neck until it was lost somewhere beneath my shirt collar.

His smile came back by degrees. The bulge in his trousers grew more noticeable.

Still holding the knife to my face, he reached down with his other hand, steadying himself against the movement of the train by pressing his hip to the seat in front of me. His grin widened to display his less-than-appetizing teeth as he slid his zipper down and pulled out his dick.

I have to admit it wasn’t a bad specimen. Half-erect. Fat. Uncut. He shifted his ass around in his pants to free it all the way, then clutched my chin with the same hand he had released his dick with to pull me toward him.

The trolley car suddenly swayed sharply as another trolley, headed in the opposite direction, brushed by us on the adjoining tracks, rocking the train with an explosion of sound and light. A whistle screamed somewhere outside.

My tormentor pulled his foreskin back, exposing a bulbous cockhead speckled with filth. I was assailed by the stench of unwashed flesh. For the first time in my life, I fully understood how the term
cheesedick
made its way into the lexicon. This fool’s unwashed cock, fully erect now, looked like it had been dipped in parmesan cheese.

I glowered up at his leering face, almost stunned by the smell. “The next time you go out looking for a blow job, you might want to introduce your dick to some soap and water first. It’s called personal hygiene. Ever hear of it?”

Anger sparked his eyes. “You can wash it for me, funny man. Use your tongue.”

I exhaled a tiny burst of air. It was almost a laugh. “You’d have to kill me first. In fact you’d have to kill me
twice
before I’d stick that filthy thing in my mouth.”

He grinned broadly. “Then I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

And just as he thrust his hips forward to press the head of his reeking cock to my lips, I pulled away and pushed my back into the seat to gain some distance. The moment I did, I took a firmer grip on the gun inside the bag.

He smiled down at me, his eyes afire with hate, and maybe lust as well. His voice was a sibilant snarl. “No blow job? Then I’m going to cut your fucking throat.”

“I don’t think so,” I said and pulled the trigger.

Even muffled by the backpack, the sound of the gunshot was jarring.

A tiny red flower burst into bloom just above the young man’s Adam’s apple. He assumed a surprised expression, as well he should have. Toppling backward, he fell as stiff as a falling oak tree. A tiny wisp of smoke issued from the hole in the top of the backpack.

The gun no longer felt cool in my hand, but warm. I released it from my grip, extracted my hand from the bag, and calmly slid the zipper closed to seal the gun inside.

The young man lay unmoving at my feet, eyes open, mouth ajar. There was almost no blood. The .38 caliber slug must have been lodged somewhere inside his noggin, not having enough force to punch its way through his thick skull after traveling through his neck, his tongue, the roof of his mouth, and then whatever brains the guy might have had, which probably wasn’t much or he would have washed his dick once in a while.