Nightlife (50 page)

But he knew he could never succumb. Knew how horrible it would make him feel the instant after fist met flesh. He had killed one man, tried to kill another, and maybe someday the gravity of that would be hard to live with. Now, though, he was tolerating it just fine, jazzed on adrenaline and righteous rage. But turning the anger on April and imprinting it in blood and bruises—he found it oddly intolerable.

Maybe it was the benign sadist in him instead. Hitting April might make her feel the peace of absolution, an evening of their scores. It should never be that easy.

“She should be killed,” Kerebawa said with contempt. “In my home, she would be killed for her treachery.”

“Yeah, well, we’re
not
in your home, so get that idea out of your head.” A little of Justin’s anger went deflecting toward Kerebawa, who did not pursue the matter and sat across the room with a disgusted huff. Justin turned back to April. “Answer me one thing.”

She nodded, but he had to prod her shoulder to get her to face him again. Her eyes were bloodshot, purgatorial in their misery.

“Why the hell didn’t you
tell
me about that message from Tony as soon as you got it? We could have figured something out.” He stalked back and forth, burning nervous energy.
“How the hell could you do that to me!”

“I didn’t think we would’ve . . . had a chance.” She wrestled mightily with something inside, and finally wrenched it free. “I was starting to lose faith, Justin! I was losing faith!” That one nailed him where he stood. “In me, you mean.”

“In you.” Her eyes pleaded for some sort of warped understanding she knew could never be granted. “You don’t understand about my father, if he finds out about that movie something’ll happen to him, I know it will, he’ll be crushed,
please,
Justin, please see that.”

He stared as if seeing her for the first time, his face a shaky balance between repugnance and astonishment. “You’re a head case. You really are. Hasn’t anybody ever told you to get some kind of therapy?”

She hunched her shoulders, and he shook his head wearily, you never know, you just never know.

“Remember what I told you last week, why I first liked you?” Her voice was meeker. He fleetingly wondered if the shift was as calculated to manipulate as her betrayal.

He tried to remember, but too much in the interim clamored for attention. Trivia was not a strong point at present. “Why?”

“I said I liked you because you were the only guy I’d met lately who was as screwed up as I am.”

Justin gave a derisive snort. “Huh. Keep looking.”

He moved before the air conditioner, let the output wash over him and chill the sweat into a sticky coating. It felt as thick as caramel by now.

He badly wanted a drink. Whiskey, gin, beer, rotgut moonshine, anything would do. Blame it on dehydration. He couldn’t remember the last time he had urinated. He ran water from the bathroom into one of the chintzy plastic cups, gulped it down, refilled. Came out and stared at Kerebawa, who sat on the floor beside the recovered packet of skullflush.

“And
you,"
he said. “What was all that about back there?
Why wouldn’t he die?"

Kerebawa’s dark eyes brimmed with knowledge, mystery. Almost otherworldly. For the first time, it looked to be a burden.

“He did.”

Justin stared as blankly as when he’d first heard Mendoza compliment April on a job well done. “He did,” he echoed.

“He died. And the
hekura
was able to fill him completely, then, and bring him back as its slave.”

Justin hurled the half-filled plastic cup into the wall. “Why didn’t you
tell
me about this? This isn’t the kind of thing you just forget about!”

Kerebawa reared up from the floor. “
I
told you! I told you not to kill him!”

“1 mean before!”
Justin screamed.

“I did!”
he screamed right back.

From somewhere on the other side of the beds’ headboards came a pounding fist, a muffled shout for them to shut up, keep the noise down, people were trying to sleep. Justin stomped over and pounded in reply, both fists, hard enough to dent the plasterboard. Shouted inarticulate threats, then whirled around to snatch up his water glass. He refilled it, then slammed it down and fell into a chair at the round breakfast table. Tired, so tired. While his mind raced like a hamster on its wheel, getting nowhere fast, just burning out.

He had to calm down. Knew that if the light sleeper on the other side of the wall started to whine again, he was nearly crazed enough to grab the AK-47 from the bed and begin firing sedatives through the wall. Breathe deeply, count to ten. Make it twenty.

“You told me?” he finally said. “When?”

“When I told you how I first came to be here. I thought you understood from when I told you of how Padre Angus died. When he was taken by the
iwä
—the alligator—and would rather die than risk us killing it. Because of how the
iwä
would return.”

Justin paled, now remembering the tale. At the time, he had dismissed it as so much rain-forest superstition. Filed it away.

“I didn’t believe you.” His voice was a raw whisper. “I didn’t know . . . didn’t know it would end up like that.” He slowly pointed at the assault rifle. “Didn’t think anything could survive
that
, I—I—” He dropped his hand and reeled back any more excuses. He had no one to blame but himself for this outcome. “I sure have fucked us.”

He looked over at April; she had keeled over on the far bed, her back to him, drawn into a fetal position. Useless—for now, at least.

Finally, “Let me get this straight: Tony’s dead, right?” Kerebawa seemed to hedge against a definite answer. “Yes, no. He died for a time, but the
hekura
brought him back. They both share his body now, with no need of the
hekura-teri
powder.”

“You mean he can change into that ugly fucker anytime he wants to?”

Kerebawa nodded. “Whenever the
hekura
wills it.” Justin threw his glass into the air in exasperation, let it fall to the carpet. “Then this is worse than what we started with.”

“And it will heal his body.”

“Sure. Why not,” he muttered. Justin pushed off his shoes. The stink was offensive even to his own nostrils. “Isn’t there any way to kill him now?”

“It will be difficult.”

Justin brightened. “But possible?”

“Yes.” As it sometimes had during their stay together, Kerebawa’s face reflected the search for words to explain concepts understood intuitively in his world. “The
hekura
and the
hekura-teri
— they are born of jungle. Not born of man. So its slaves cannot die by a man’s hand. Your guns, your bullets —they are not from that world, they have no results that will last. If your machines pull down a tree in the jungle, a new tree will grow, in time. The jungle heals itself, if allowed. The
hekura
are no different. He is theirs now.”

Justin was beginning to see this reasoning. Primitive, the key was primitive. “Okay. Okay. What about your bow and arrows? You’ve still got a couple of those bamboo tips left. Why not use them?”

Kerebawa was shaking his head even before Justin finished. “No, no, no. They are no different than guns, they are made by men.
Hekura-teri
is born of jungle, and its slaves must die by jungle.”

Justin nodded. Kerebawa had explained as best as he could, and the case appeared to be closed. Here it was, take it or leave it.

Options, what were his options? They had, with tonight’s recovery, taken ownership of the entire load of
hekura-teri.
One victory, at least. Destroy it all, and Kerebawa’s duty was fulfilled. Run him back to Miami, try to link him up with his smugglers, and that would be that. And then keep going. Maybe south, down into the Keys, where life was as lazy as waves splashing on coral beaches and the languid winds in palm fronds. Feel it, taste it, live it. Hemingway’s ghost beckoned. Or head back north, look for someplace new to settle and call home. An entire nation was at his disposal. Hurl a dart at a map and head for the point. He had always liked Boston, and Boulder, Colorado.

He could start the trip tomorrow, once sleep had buffered him against the violence and horrors of this night. He could be on the road in hours.

But he knew he wouldn’t be.

Ultimately, Mendoza had been the responsibility of the police. Rene Espinoza and her guarded assurances. Now, though, the burden had surely shifted, the moment he had pulled that trigger on Tony. And then there was the matter of a graveside promise to Erik.

“Jungle,” he murmured. “Where are we gonna find a jungle in the middle of Tampa?”

The only thing to answer was the chug of the air conditioner.

After another couple of minutes, Justin could tolerate the feel of his skin no longer. He dragged his waning body into the bathroom, cranked the tub water to maximum intensity. The nervous wired energy of the firelight was starting to neutralize. Soak it out, wash it down the drain.

He stripped, let the vile clothes lie where they fell. He inspected his body. Several cuts, nicks, and scrapes sustained from crawling back and forth through the windshield frame. Tiny smears of blood and scabs dotting his torso, arms, knees. He looked at his face in the mirror for the first time. More dried blood, plus the bruised swelling from Barrington’s foot. Not too horrendous; he might have been able to get away with a lie about dental work if not for the cut on his cheek.

While the tub filled, he wrapped a towel around his waist and left the room long enough to hotfoot down to the ice machine and fill the plastic bucket. Back in the bathroom, he dumped the ice into a hand towel, bundled it up, soaked it in cold water in the sink. A crude but effective ice pack.

Justin eased into the tub, leaned back with a warm wet washcloth draped over his eyes and the ice pack pressed to his cheek. Club Med couldn’t have felt any better. Water and porcelain became as rich as silk. He could open the drain and risk oozing away with the water.

He floated in a timeless limbo in which the world outside could not penetrate past the washcloth, the ice pack. Sleep came to flirt with him, an elusive tease. He had no idea how long he’d been in the tub when light footsteps sounded on the tile floor. He pulled the washcloth away and blinked into focus.

April.

She cracked open a can of Busch beer, set it on the rim of the tub. Blue sky, white mountains. His hand crawled for it with a will of its own. Good, oh, very very good.

“I went out a few minutes. That convenience store down the street,” she said.

He nodded.

“Can we talk? Please talk to me.”

He looked at her sideways, evenly. Betraying nothing within. “You should have thought of that earlier.”

She sat atop the toilet lid, each hand cupping the opposite elbow, resting down upon her legs, knees pressed together. No more tears, of which he was glad, but their legacy remained. He idly wondered what the convenience-store clerk must have thought of the sight of her. She looked as if one sharp word would draw blood.

“Why did you bring me back?” she asked. “Why didn’t you just leave me behind at the warehouse?”

Justin drank, worked his tongue in the cut on the inside of his cheek. The beer seemed to anesthetize it.

“I don’t really know,” he finally said. “Cover my tracks, I guess. If you’d been around when the police got there, how long would it have taken before you’d have given them this room number?”

She said nothing.

“Maybe I can’t trust you, but I can at least keep an eye on you until it’s over.” He shook his head. “I’m curious about something. You obviously didn’t tell Tony about Kerebawa. He wasn’t prepared for that at all. The guy with the assault rifle was there in case
we
got out of hand. So why didn’t you serve
him
up on a silver platter like you did me?”

“I’m not sure. I guess . . . I was hoping he might get away, and—and I wouldn’t have to live with the idea of him too.”

“Nice of you to take him into consideration, at least.” His voice was cobra venom.

“You don’t understand.”

How many times had he heard that? Ten? Twelve? Justin shook his head slowly. Stared at her, the low cold throbbing in his face, the trickle of water crawling along his scalp. She squirmed under the scrutiny, and as the seconds wormed by, he could almost grasp some sense of the depth of whatever she had suffered in an unfathomable past. Somewhere so deep and so tangled in the roots of her life that it might never be extricated, could be brought to the surface only by hacking and mangling those roots beyond repair. Never understand? He might at that, if only he knew. But understanding did not mean forgiveness. That legendary unkindest cut of all was a wound like no other, and oh, such scars it left behind.

Justin wiped across his eyes with the washcloth. He could feel his own tears starting to form, did not want her to see them. Although she would likely detect their presence in his voice.

“I loved you,” he whispered raggedly. “I believed in you. I would’ve trusted my life with you.” He swallowed. Anybody who said that emotion was not a tangible solid had never had to deal with the kind of lump he had in his throat. “What a fucking moron I was.”

He’d thought her crying was over. He was wrong.

Justin felt as if he were on some accelerated reactory cycle of loss. Same pattern as dealing with a loved one’s death. First denial, then fury. Then real grief, ravenous and all-consuming. He had sped through the first two, was now on the nauseating spiral down to the third. But in some ways, this was worse than death. It was like watching a loved one rot before your eyes, by choice, knowing you were helpless to stop it. At least the dead leave behind memories, pristine, unspoiled by time. This? This was like watching all the memories, one by one, sprout thorns, turn to poison.

“Just leave me alone,” he said. “Just walk out that door and shut it, like you found it.”

April nodded, rose from her seat. She was halfway out the door when she lingered, one hand wrapped around its edge, and turned to look back. Red eyes looking hopelessly for chinks in that tarnished armor he wore.