Payback (23 page)

I jerked away. “Don’t touch me like that.”

His eyes narrowed into mean little slits. “Don’t worry, fag. That’s the only taste of me you’ll ever get.”

Like I cared.

Something bumped the back of my leg. It was Franklin. He whimpered softly, then emitted a soft growl. I think he was protecting me. At least that’s what I told myself he was doing. I looked down at him, and a dribble of urine seeped out of him, splashing the floor.

He emitted another soft whimper and pressed himself to me. I reached down and stroked his ear.

Spence’s murderer cackled. “You two deserve each other. You’re both pissing your pants.”

I tried to think.
How can I get to the gun in the basement? Why did I hide it so fucking far away?

I racked my brain, trying to make time. Trying to give myself an edge. Give myself a chance. “What’s your name?”

That
really
made him laugh. “What’s next, asshole? Where you from? Whad’ya like to do in bed? You a top or a bottom? You queers make me sick.”

“Don’t hold back,” I said. “Tell me how you feel. So what’s your name? I always like to know my murderer’s name. It’s sort of a thing with me.”
Stall him. Just keep stalling.

The man who was determined to be the last human I would ever speak to simply eyeballed me up and down like he had never seen a sorrier pile of crap. “If it’s that important to you, my name is Rico. Don’t bother memorizing it. You won’t be around long enough to use it anyway. Now where’s the money stashed?”

He still held a clump of my T-shirt in his fist. He held it so tight, the collar was rubbing my skin raw at the back of my neck.

“Kitchen,” I said. The last thing I was going to do was give him another crack at the wedding ring I had just had returned to me. He already had Spence’s. That was bad enough. “There’s some cash in the cupboard.” That much was true, but my fake can of corn that was made to hide cash from the dumber segment of the burglarizing public was almost empty. I had used the money for groceries during the past months when I wasn’t working. If I was lucky, good old Rico would find maybe thirty dollars in it. I had a pretty good idea that wouldn’t be enough to make him happy.

Then I had a better idea. “Take me to the bank and I can draw you some cash out of the ATM. I’ll give you all you want if you’ll just let me go.”
Maybe a trip to the bank would give me time to think. Time for Chris to get here. Time for
something!

He stomped off toward the kitchen with me in tow. Poor Franklin howled in pain when I accidentally stepped on his foot as Rico dragged me across the room. “How stupid do you think I am, faggot? Bank security cameras and all that crap? Just shut your
mouth and show me what you’ve got in the house. And don’t even think about me letting you go. That ain’t gonna happen. As a matter of fact, asshole, you’re already dead. You just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Wonderful. Just what I wanted to hear.

The storm was going gangbusters now. Flashes of lightning splintered the starless sky outside, hurling blasts of light against the windowpanes like buckets of white paint. Torrents of rainwater sluiced off the rooftop, rattling the rain gutters and splashing the windows like the house was rolling through a carwash.

Where was Chris? Where the fuck was Chris?

I made the mistake of trying to pull myself out of Rico’s grip, and he whirled on me. Cramming the tip of the knife against my neck, he hissed into my ear. “Give me a reason to use it. Go ahead. It won’t take much, you know. I’m ready to saw your goddamn head off right now.”

I gasped against the steel tip of the knife pressing into my flesh. “Then you’ll never find the money.”

He laughed. “Don’t kid yourself. With you out of the way, I could take my time and tear this place apart.”

A brainstorm at last.

“You still won’t find it,” I taunted. “And even if you
do
find it, how’re you going to get it open?”

He froze, the tip of his knife still pressed to my neck. I could feel a tiny rivulet of blood seeping across my Adam’s apple where he had pricked my skin.
Jesus, what it is with Latinos and knives? This is the second time I’ve been poked in the neck by one.

Rico relaxed the grip he had on my shirt. He pushed me out to arm’s length and studied my face. “What are you saying, faggot? Are you saying you’ve got a safe?” He looked around the house—at my thousand-dollar TV set, the crystal dishes and Lenox china in the dining room hutch, the fox-hide throw on the back of the sofa.

“It makes sense,” he said, more to himself than to me. “You’ve got money, don’t you, faggot? You must have a really good job. What do you do, pervert? What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an accountant.” That much was true, but the safe was pure fantasy. Hopefully I’d still be alive when Rico figured that out.

He stared at me for a second, then burst out laughing. “Bullshit,” he said, grinning widely. “Accountants don’t live this good.”

I decided to slap him with a little bit of truth, just to really piss him off. “That’s where you’re wrong. My accounting job pays about a hundred thirty grand a year. The man you murdered in cold blood made even more money than I do. Feeling a little bit like a failure now, are you, dumbass? What did your last job pay? Five bucks an hour for flipping burgers? Twenty bucks a day for trimming hedges? Are you a yardman? Is that what you do when you’re not out murdering innocent people? No,” I finished up. “That’s not it at all. You’re just another leech on society that’s never held down a job at all, right? You’ve never worked a day in your fucking life.”

Rico’s fist came out of nowhere and connected with the side of my head. I saw stars. At that precise moment, several things happened at once.

From the force of his blow, I went sliding across the kitchen floor on my back and collided with the basement door, damn near breaking my neck. My face went numb where Rico’s fist had collided with it. I didn’t have time to bitch about it because suddenly, and with considerable amazement, I found myself staring speechless as good old Franklin finally found his courage.

With a roar of fury, he launched himself off the floor and, sailing high, clamped his teeth into Rico’s arm, dislodging the knife in Rico’s hand and sending them both crashing against the kitchen table. A bowl of fruit tipped and clattered to the floor. Apples rolled in every direction.

While Rico tried to shake Franklin off and, in the process, stumbled over a kitchen chair and landed with a thud on the kitchen floor among the apples, I shook the fog from my head and clawed my way to my feet. Franklin continued to worry Rico’s arm like a terrier with a rat.

Rico bellowed obscenities and rained blows on the dog, but Franklin just held on to Rico’s forearm with his sharp little teeth, growling and snarling and dribbling piss everywhere. Unable to free himself from Franklin’s fangs, Rico scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees, dragging Franklin along beside him, and reached out to grab the knife he had dropped. When I saw what he was doing, I kicked the knife away and wrenched open the basement door. A second later I was flinging myself down the basement stairs.

At that moment, the lights went out, and the three of us were thrown into stygian darkness.

The sudden loss of light so surprised me I lost my footing and stumbled down the remaining steps to the basement floor. In the impenetrable darkness, I shook the pain away to clear my head and get my bearings. Holy shit, it was a blackout. Lightning must have struck a transformer. I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Thank you, God,” I whispered through numb and bloody lips.

A roar from somewhere upstairs told me Rico and Franklin were still doing battle. I couldn’t see where I was going, so I tripped my way through piles of junk on the basement floor until I crashed head-on into the furnace in the corner. I scrambled around behind it, groping in the shadows, seeking the backpack I had hidden there more than two months earlier. A spider skittered across my face, and I hardly noticed it. On a normal day, that spider would have sent me to the emergency room with a heart attack.

My scrabbling fingers finally hooked one of the straps on the backpack, and I dragged it out from behind the furnace where I could get at it. With trembling hands, I tried to work the zipper open, and at that moment, above me, I heard Franklin yelp in pain and then the sound of heavy footfalls racing down the basement steps.

“You son of a bitch!” Rico screamed, and halfway down the stairs, just as I had, he lost his footing. With a curse he came crashing to the basement floor, landing less than twenty feet from me with a horrible, thudding gasp of pain.

I frantically clawed at the backpack until I heard the zipper slide. Cramming my hand inside, I felt the cold iron of the gun and ripped it out of the bag. Feeling in the darkness for the safety, I clicked it to Off and swung around to face my attacker.

Where was Franklin? Was he still in the kitchen, or had he followed Rico down the stairs?

I slapped my thigh and immediately heard the patter of toenails crossing the basement floor toward me. When Franklin pressed his snout into my leg, I reached down, took hold of his fur to keep him next to me, and aimed the gun into the darkness ahead.

Rico’s words coming out of the shadows sent chills up my spine. “You’re a dead man now, faggot.”

I tipped my head to the side, considering his words, then decided,
Nope. I don’t think I’ll let that happen.

At the sound of a heavy boot crashing into a box of junk, the sound closer already than the voice had been, I aimed the gun into the noise and squeezed the trigger.

The flash of the gunshot strobed the room with a golden explosion of light, but the darkness returned before I could comprehend what it was I had seen. While I might not be able to see what I’d done, a wail of terror told me my shot was a good one. Something heavy hit the floor, and I heard a flurry of clattering noises that I recognized as a tool chest tipping over. A moan erupted from what sounded like the base of the stairs.

I dropped to my knees, still aiming the gun into the shadows in front of me. Franklin and I cowered against each other, each drawing strength from the other, and just as I was about to fire into the darkness again, the lights blinked back on.

R
ICO
LAY
at the foot of the stairs, his body twisted around, half-draped through the railing. My bullet had caught him in the thigh, and he was staring at the wound with wide, frightened eyes. I couldn’t say I blamed him. There was a geyser of blood shooting out of the wound with such force it was sprinkling the basement floor and the stairs around him.

He pressed a trembling hand to the fountain of blood and tried to stop the flow. When he did, the blood merely seeped through his fingers, unstoppable.

“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, his face convulsed in horror. “Help me. I don’t want to die.”

I approached him slowly, gun in hand, unmoved by his plea. This was the bastard who beat Spence to death with an iron pipe, after all. I had no sympathy for him whatsoever.

“Spence didn’t want to die either,” I said calmly. And once again I was surprised to feel the calm inside me. The unshakable disconnect. My hands were steady. My heartbeat unhurried. I even felt a smile playing at the corners of my mouth as I studied the man pleading for his life at the foot of the stairs.

The warm pistol felt like a friend in my hand and I raised it to point the barrel at Rico’s face. His eyes opened wider than they already were, and it pleased me to see his fear.

“Please, no,” he pleaded. “Get me an ambulance. Please.”

“You’re bleeding out,” I said, tightening my finger on the trigger. “The bullet must have snagged your femoral artery. I’ll give you the option you never gave Spence. Do you want to bleed to death slowly, or do you want a bullet in the brain? Either way, it’s all the same to me. The choice is yours, but you’d better choose quickly. I don’t think you’ve got all day to piddle around about it. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Tears of pain and terror rolled down his cheeks. His entire leg was awash with blood. It dripped down the stairs and puddled on the basement floor. Already his face looked pale and gaunt. He pressed his hand tighter to the wound but the blood continued to flow. He licked his lips and began to weep.

“Please,” he begged, “don’t do this.”

Franklin tensed at my side and let out a bark. At the same moment, I heard footsteps upstairs in the house. They crossed the kitchen floor, and a moment later a shadow filled the doorway at the top of the stairs. I looked up to see Chris standing there. He was soaking wet from the rain, and he held his service revolver in his left hand.

I turned away from Chris and focused my attention on Rico again. I cocked the gun, and Rico cried out in fear. I stepped closer to him, still aiming the barrel directly at his face. The sudden stench of feces told me he had soiled himself in his fear, or maybe it was from the blood loss weakening his body. Either way I could see he was appalled by what he’d done.

“You really are a coward,” I said, my finger tightening on the trigger.

Chris spoke coolly from the top of the stairs. “Don’t do it, Tyler. Please. Don’t do it.”

Rico twisted his head around to look behind him and saw the detective standing there with a gun in his hand. The gun was hanging limp at Chris’s side, as if he had forgotten he still held it in his hand.

“Thank God!” Rico sobbed. “Help me. Don’t let him kill me! Shoot the fucker! Shoot him!”

“Shut up,” Chris said before I had a chance to, and the terror in Rico’s face multiplied. He was trembling now from blood loss. His face was ashen. He barely had the strength to hold his hand over the hole in his leg to try to stem the flow of blood. And truthfully, none of his efforts so far had stemmed the flow of blood at all. It still poured through his fingers onto the steps, and from the steps, it dribbled down to the floor below. There was a pool of blood spreading out from Rico in every direction. I figured if he were a car, his oil light would be on by now.