Dirtbags (8 page)

“No, we’re supposed to take that away because it’s what we came here to do.” A vein in Phillip’s forehead trembled. “When someone comes to do something, it should get done.”

“It ain’t the first time you’ve had to go to Plan B, Phillip.” Calvin crossed his arms. “I don’t reckon it to be the last neither.”

Calvin ducked as Phillip launched the bottle of whiskey across the room. It, being plastic, bounced off the corner of the wall and landed soundlessly on the carpet. Denied the satisfaction of shattering glass, Phillip feared that he himself might explode. Calvin, sensing trouble brewing, made for the door.

“We’re not killing her,” he said. Stopping at the bureau, he scooped up the gym bag by its straps and slung it over his shoulder. He opened the door and stepped outside, into the corridor. “That’s final. You work through whatever you need to work through in order to make that right, but the mission has changed. We’re headed back to Lake Castor tomorrow, and we’re going to knock off London. I’ll be back for you then.”

Calvin closed the door. Phillip thought he might explode. He stared at the bottle and wished a million things but knew his days of wishing got him nowhere. He figured this something that could play out a dozen different ways, but one he couldn’t stomach was leaving with regrets. Regret was something he had in spades and didn’t fancy needing any more.

And staring at that bottle, he began to curse everything. Curse Calvin and his self-defeating needs and urges. Curse himself for listening to him in the first place, despite his own reservations. Curse the world for being a motherfucker and, most of all, curse Corrina London. Phillip’s shoulders sagged, and he reckoned it well and good to seize upon that bottle in the corner and accept his lot, stay up all night and drink away his regret, but he knew deep down inside that would never do. No, he reminded himself then and there:
this is not my lot in life.

No, rather his lot was to be found at the bottom of a pile of rubble that had been his high school. His lot had been to purge the world of a cancer of ruthless, rednecked populace sprung forth from the cunt of that horrible village. His lot had been to rain hellfire down among the hallways of his brethren and, amid a sonata of wailing and weeping, lay waste to the landscape . . . but he had failed. He had failed miserably, and all he had left in him was regret.

Regret. Back home, when he stopped for groceries at the food mart, he could not look to the mangled face of the boy bagging groceries. That was his fault. The boy bagging groceries had been Kevin Valentine’s little brother. Valentine, the varsity quarterback during Phillip’s junior year had gone on to drop out of college and, one night after returning home, tee-boned an eighteen-wheeler while driving drunk. His little brother had been in the passenger seat and, after four months in a coma, returned to life with a face rearranged. Phillip could never bring himself to face the boy because, had he gone through with things that warm, April day, the boy would not be scarred and broken.

Two years after Phillip graduated, Coach Boynton knocked up a fifteen year-old track athlete and got caught. The trial was lengthy and nasty and made it in the Richmond newspapers and, in her shame, the student tossed herself off Nokomis Bridge. Phillip felt responsible for her, too. He had no doubt in his mind that Coach Boynton would have tried to be a hero, and Phillip would have put a bullet between his eyes, and that poor girl would still be alive today.

Phillip Krandall stayed up at night with thoughts such as these. David Seward, who served as a state representative and passed laws damaging to the environment. Graham Kendrick, who kept finding himself accused of fondling. Linda Gentry, who left her newborn baby in a dumpster to be found by someone more Christian or for the elements or something that wouldn’t have mattered in the first place if Phillip had done what he set out to do. He stared at his ceiling and, instead of counting sheep, counted atrocities across the county that he could trace back to his failure.

Standing in that motel room, staring at the bottle chucked at the head of Calvin Cantrell, Phillip swore he would not make the same mistake. He would not allow Calvin Cantrell to cancel his date with destiny yet again. He stood there the better part of an hour before he finally moved. He couldn’t possibly slow the thoughts enough to get a handle on them, but for the first time since his junior year in high school, he knew in which direction his compass pointed. He opened his laptop and tapped away for a bit, scrolled some, clicked here and there and, in no time, found what he was looking for. Satisfied, he picked up his cellphone.

It answered on the fourth ring.

“Mister London,” he said into the phone, “you don’t know me, but I know you. And I have some very valuable information for you.”

7

Calvin’s stomach threw fits this way and that, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure what was the matter. It ached and burned, and he spent some time hunched out the car door, praying to vomit but sicked up nothing more than warmed spit. It could be all the coffee, he thought, but didn’t truly consider it. He drank more coffee than this on a regular basis and had gotten nary a butterfly in his belly. No, this was something else.

He stopped at a small supermarket for some milk to calm him down. As he trolled the aisles, looking for the dairy, something nagged at him, something more than a tummy flu. Every time he looked to put a finger on it, his thoughts went to Corrina. Small, delicate, sad Corrina, hurt to no end by a shit hand she’d been dealt. Hadn’t they all been shit hands? With a girl like her, there was little he couldn’t do. The kindness, the warmth, the genuine . . .

And it slapped Calvin across the face, sure as day, and there he stood, smack dab in that grocery store aisle, one hand on a box of wheat flakes, the other holding a carton of milk, but not for long. It fell to the ground and made a
kerplunk
and most anybody watching was sure disappointed when it didn’t break and spill milk everywhere. He put that hand to his mouth which itself had opened pretty wide.

“I’m in love with Corrina,” he said. He nearly forgot to drop the wheat flakes before hitting the door, but did, and the sensors didn’t go crazy as he dashed like mad to the parking lot. Once outside, he sped away in a mess of screeching tires and blasting car horns. “Horse fire.” He whistled as he breezed through the first red light. “Sure as shit, I’m in love with Corrina!”

He figured it just as cliché as any film on the subject. He got too close. He could curse himself and spit and kick dirt, but it now stared him in the face, and he would never pretend not to notice it. There was a lot of whiskey in the world, and he’d probably had more than his fair share, but he would have to drink a pretty penny more to ever convince himself that he didn’t ever know what he now knew. He put his foot on the gas and high-tailed it.

The trip to her apartment couldn’t have taken any longer. If there was a red light, he caught it. If an old lady was anywhere on the road in South Dallas, he found himself behind her. No one drove the speed limit, no one gave a shit. Calvin figured he got his money’s worth on the car horn with just this one ride. He rounded corners, raced up thoroughfares, and finally, with no further ado, whipped into a parking space three units down from Corrina’s apartment.

He jogged the difference, heart pounding as he sprinted up the steps first to the second floor and then to the third, rather than wait for the elevator. He bolted the final few feet down the hallway and threw a fist to bang on the door but found it slightly ajar. He pushed it open and barged on in.

“Corrina!” he cried to the empty room. Nobody in the kitchenette across the countertop. He heard something in the back room and made for the hallway. “Corrina, I have something to tell you and it can’t wait. Honey, brace yourself because—”

He came to the doorway, the same doorway he’d put her against later that first night, across the same threshold where he’d lain with her, spent and sweat-soaked, and froze. Much like he had only moments earlier in the grocery aisle, slack-jawed and arms at his side in idiot fashion.

“What the—” He couldn’t speak. Again, he threw his hand to his mouth. He took two steps backward, out of the room.

Phillip stood over her. She was dead, sure, but Phillip had yet to finish with her. He had a syringe in her left arm—which hung limp at her side—as he searched for yet another vein. Her eyes were open. Foggy. Looking past Calvin at something that may have been there at one time but was long gone now. Calvin collapsed to his knees.

“I’m so sorry, Calvin,” Phillip said. “You know I didn’t want to do it without you.”

Her mouth, her lips curled into a sort of smile, as if those last moments hadn’t completely sucked, but those weren’t the moments that ate at Calvin. Rather, he bothered with the moments before. How much had she struggled when she knew what Phillip was up to? Had she struggled at all? What did he do to her to get her to take the shit? Had he hit her? Had he somehow talked her into it?

He shook his head, put a thumb and forefinger into his own eyes. A growl rumbled deep in his throat.

“You weren’t going to do it,” Phillip said. “We had to. The money, Calvin. Think about the money.”

Calvin couldn’t think about any one, single thing. His mind raced in circles like the spinner on
Wheel of Fortune,
and he had no idea what it would land on, or for how long. The first time he met Corrina, her with the sad, forlorn eyes. Kissing her for the first time and how his leg shook like the dickens. Them, lying in bed way past time for her to get to work. Her lips turning blue as she looked beyond him with eyes long translucent.

Tom London telling everyone his junkie ex-wife overdosed, and that’s all there was to it.

Phillip, sticking her in the arm with the goddamned syringe . . .

“You don’t understand,” Phillip said. “London said it was either you or her. You think he didn’t know you two were carrying on like you were? You think he’s stupid?”

Calvin rose from his knees.

Phillip continued: “So he tells me one of you has to go. He’s pretty sore about this whole thing, and I’ve got to say I don’t blame him. I came up here with you because we was going to do a job. We was going to kill this girl and get paid and get the experience we need for killing somebody for money, and we’re finally going to get it, and you go and do the single dumbest thing a person in our situation can do.”

Calvin staggered forward, first his left foot, then a shaky right. He massaged the bridge of his nose.

“So I made a decision,” Phillip said. “I made it for the both of us. He said it was you or her, and well, I decided it was her. It wasn’t no question at all. I do this and hell, I can tell him you came to your senses, and you did it. We can go back to Lake Castor and collect our money, and nobody’s none the wiser. We go on with our lives. He said it was you or her, and I picked her. If it was you—”

Calvin pulled the gun and fired. He got the shot off before he took time to aim, so the first one caught Phillip in the left arm, right about the spot where he’d jammed the needle into Corrina. Calvin figured it poetic justice, but not near poetic enough, so he fired again. This time, it got him in the gut. Phillip went down in a mess of screams.

“What are you doing?” Phillip cried in a fury. “Jesus Christ, you shot me! You shot me in my fucking stomach!”

Rather than listen to him caterwaul any further, Calvin squeezed the trigger again, but this time got him in the chest where he figured he had the best chance of shutting him up. It worked. Phillip fell silent and spoke no more. Instantaneous. A light shutting off. Calvin dropped the gun and crumpled at Corrina’s body.

“Poor girl,” he moaned. “Poor, poor girl.”

He stroked her hair gently and sobbed into her chest. Something warm trickled between him and her, and he popped up his head and saw Phillip’s blood making a mess of things, so he stepped back, slowly at first. Then he backed against the wall, avoiding the gore.

Phillip’s blood ran underneath her, and Calvin stood there watching it, realizing that every moment he waited to pull her from it was another moment wasted, and soon he would be able to do nothing. So nothing is what he did. Phillip bled out, and she lay there in a pool of it, bed and clothes soaked, sheets saturated . . . soon enough of Phillip’s insides dripped off the side of the bed and onto the floor, and Calvin wondered how much of it could come out of just one person.

He wanted to move her. He wanted to get her out of there or at least remove the syringe. He didn’t want London telling everyone she was found overdosed, in bed with a dead man.

He could picture him at the bar, explaining to anyone who would listen: “That’s what you get.” He would probably have food in his teeth and stains on his shirt. “You lie down with dogs, you get fleas.”

All the stories about her being a junkie would now carry merit, all due to her grisly end. But Calvin still could not move her. Not without tracking through all that mess. And neither could he remove the syringe, because he couldn’t bear to go near her. He plain figured he’d mucked things up enough.

So he left.

He stepped out of the room and took off his shirt and right away set to wiping everything he could find. Door handles, walls, tabletops. He went into the bathroom and wiped the sink knobs and the toilet flusher. He didn’t know how fast or how long he was supposed to wipe, but in the end, figured it didn’t matter because he’d left enough of him behind in the bedroom back there. No, best he could hope for was nobody would come looking for anything after seeing one junkie with a bullet hole and another with a needle in her arm.

That’s when he realized he would have to stage a bit of it himself. For the first time, he realized he’d returned the gun to his pocket, that it was still on him. He fished it out, wiped at the grip and trigger guard, then stepped back into the bedroom. Things were as he left them, and he tiptoed past the spreading pool of muck and dropped the gun next to Corrina.

“You shot him, then you OD’d,” he informed her. “And I weren’t never here.” He backed out of the bedroom, into the hall, and set to wiping down more stuff, whether he’d touched it or not. For lack of anything better to do. He felt if he stopped moving—if he stopped cleaning—if he stopped doing
anything
, he may burst into flames for want of solace.