Small Crimes (25 page)

I
couldn't help laughing.

'Laugh
all you want, bright guy. The extra ten grand is the price you're paying for
bothering my pop. And now I want a minimum eight grand each week.'

'Yeah,
well, I want peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind. We don't all get what
we want, Junior.'

'
I
'l
l
get it, don't worry. I'll either get the forty grand in money or in enjoyment.
One way or the other I'll get it.'

'Don't
hold your breath.'

His
face flushed and his eyes half-closed as he glared at me. 'You think you're so
fucking smart, don't you? Let me tell you something, Joe, the difference
between you and me is I don't say a word without having everything set up
first. You, you go shooting off your mouth without knowing what the fuck you're
saying. I got something for you to look at.'

He
reached into the inside pocket of his black leather jacket and pulled out a
folded document and handed it to me. It was an affidavit from Earl Kelley. In
it Earl claimed the night Billy Ferguson was murdered he played poker with
Junior. He also claimed he tried inviting me into the game, but that I told him
1
had business to take
care of. There was more stuff in it but that was the gist of it.

'You
can keep it,' Junior said. 'It's a copy. I got the original.'

'Thanks.'

'Pretty
stupid of you shooting off your mouth to my pop,' he said. 'Whatcha thinking?
That he's not going to tell me everything you said?'

'Yeah,
it was stupid,' I agreed.

'So
you're not so brilliant, are you?' he said. 'And Duane and Jamie will be seeing
you Wednesday to collect my first eight grand. You want to know something? I'm
hoping you don't have the money. Be seeing you soon, Joe.'

He
started to walk away, but stopped to tell Jamie to stick with me.

'Make
sure he don't go near Pop,' he said.

I
watched as he and Duane walked down the hallway. Jamie stood next to me,
smirking. When Junior was out of sight, I told Jamie to beat it. He seemed to
find something amusing in that and got a good chuckle out of it.

I
started in the direction of Manny's room.

'Hey,
asshole, where do you think you're going?'

Jamie's
smirk grew wider as he put a hand out to stop me. I turned and kicked him hard
below the knee with what you'd call in martial arts a front snap-kick. He let
out a howl and hopped on one leg, grabbing at his injured knee. Before he could
do much else, I took hold of his head and slammed it as hard as I could against
the wall. It made a loud clanging noise. He groaned at that. I let go and he
slid down the wall. He wasn't out, not entirely, but he wasn't in either. I saw
that his head had taken a large chunk out of the wall. If his skull hadn't been
as hard as concrete, I probably would've killed him. I looked behind me to make
sure no one saw anything and then kept walking.

Taking
him out was easier than I would've expected. I guess he didn't expect me to do
anything. I guess over the years he had gotten used to people just pissing in
their pants at the sight of him. This time, though, it looked like I left him
pissing in his own pants.

It
was a few minutes past seven. I got to Manny's room and found him alone. He was
sleeping with his mouth wide open, and as he breathed, he made thin grunting
noises. What was lying there was only the skin and bones of what used to be
Manny. It was as if all his flesh had been sucked out of him. Yet there was
enough of him left to screw me over. All I could think of was why he couldn't
just die already.

I
was watching him from the doorway when a nurse I hadn't seen before squeezed
past me.

'Visiting
hours are over,' she said, shooting me back an annoyed look.

"That's
okay. I was really trying to find Charlotte.'

'Charlotte
Boyd?'

'Yes.'

'Her
shift's over. I think she headed home.'

I
thanked her. I took a few steps away from the door and watched for a moment as
she took Manny's pulse, and then got out of there. Jamie was still sitting on
the floor when I walked by, but he had company; a nurse and a doctor were
checking him out. He looked up, but I don't think he recognized me. I don't
think he knew what planet he was on. I kept going. A security guard ran past me
while I walked out of the hallway.

No
one bothered to stop me as I made my way through the hospital and out to my
car. As I drove to Charlotte's apartment, I thought about Junior. I couldn't
make up my mind whether he was putting on an act or not. He seemed convincing
about not knowing I'd been shot at. I had to think if he had shot at me he
would have found a way to rub my nose in it. But if he didn't take those shots
at me, somebody else did. I couldn't imagine Dan doing it. If he had decided to
go to his Plan B, he'd find an easier and less public way to take me out. And I
couldn't imagine Phil doing it either. No matter how strongly he might hate me,
I couldn't imagine him doing something like that. And it made no sense,
especially if he expected to crack Manny and have me locked away for life. His
daughter, Clara, though...

Yeah,
she was another story. There was so much rage still in her. When I saw her in
church, she was chalk white and trembling with it. I could see her trying
something like that, or maybe talking a friend into it. I could see her playing
up the attempted rape and showing off her bruises, and getting some dumb
football type worked up enough to try blowing my head off. It could've been
something like that...

Or
it could've been a friend or family member of one of the boys I'd put in the
hospital. Other names popped into my head, names of people who I knew would
have no problem taking a shot at me.

Over
the years I've learned to trust my first gut feeling, and usually nine times
out of ten it's been right. But the more I thought about it, the more the
shooting smelled like something an amateur would try. Someone would've had to
park and wait by the curb until I was visible through a window. It was still
possible Junior did it, but I was beginning to have my doubts.

As
far as the affidavit went, I had been expecting something like that ever since
I shot my mouth off. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I said anything to
Manny about Ferguson's murder. I knew it, but I couldn't help myself. Maybe I
was a little hurt that Earl went along with it, but I could understand it.
Junior probably offered to lower his weekly take.
P
couldn't blame Earl. The only person I had to blame was
myself. I never should have said a word to Manny about trying to wrap Junior up
with Ferguson's murder. I knew it at the time, but I let him get under my skin.
My price for that was the affidavit.

I
checked several times along the way and saw that Hal Wheely was still following
me. I figured it didn't matter. He'd know the apartment complex, but he'd still
have no idea who I was seeing there. And I had no plans on being seen with
Charlotte anywhere in public.

When
I arrived at the Maple Farms apartment complex, I waited until Wheely parked,
and then drove behind his car so I would have to walk past him. When I did, I
gave him a wave. That pissed him off. He rolled down his window, spat, and then
looked away, pretending not to notice me.

I
had to ring Charlotte's buzzer several times before she answered. She buzzed me
in, and later when she opened her door, looked surprised.

'Joe,
you're forty-five minutes early.'

'I've
been anxious to see you,' I said, which was mostly true. I couldn't wait any
longer.'

'Well
- why don't you come in?'

I
followed her into her apartment. After sitting down, I asked whether she had
any more samples of the allergy medication she'd given me the other day.

'You
won't need it,' she said, showing a secretive little smile. I put my cats in a
kennel for the night. Joe, I was planning to surprise you and make you dinner.
Would that be alright? If you want to go out instead, we could still do that.'

'No,
dinner here would be nice. Do you want me to help?'

'Why
don't you sit down and relax. You can watch TV if you like, or listen to music.
Can I get you a drink? I bought a bottle of Scotch today.'

'Scotch
on the rocks would be great.'

She
gave me a puzzled look so I explained, 'Scotch with some ice.'

She
made me the drink and brought it back to me, and then went into the kitchen to
prepare dinner. I brought the drink over to her CD collection and looked at
what music she had. It was mostly classical and operas. She did have one of old
Frank Sinatra songs, 1940s-era stuff. I settled on that, and after putting it
in the CD player, I went back to the loveseat.

I
leaned back, stretching out my shoulder muscles, and then took a sip of my
drink. The kitchen was open to the living room, and I could see Charlotte
pounding chicken breasts with a mallet. She smiled at me when she noticed me
looking at her. It was a nice smile. I smiled back.

'What
are you making?' I asked.

Looking
very pleased with herself, she told me, 'Chicken Cordon Bleu.'

I
felt relaxed sitting there. On the surface it was nice, and I guess it was the
way some people actually lived; just sitting back and listening to Sinatra as
you sipped Scotch and had a pretty woman make you dinner.

Of
course, the woman in this case had deep issues and probably bordered on
psychotic. But as I sat there, it didn't matter to me. And I had to admit that
Charlotte, at least for the moment, was pretty. I'm not saying she was
beautiful by any stretch - she wasn't anywhere near in the same league as
someone like Toni - but in her own way, she was pretty. Her nervousness was
gone and she had fixed herself up and had put on some makeup. Her hair was set
so it fell past her shoulders, and she was dressed nicely, wearing black Capri
pants and a pink short-sleeve sweater. And again, she had better curves than I
would've thought after seeing her in her nurse's uniform. The pants she was
wearing made her hips look slender enough that I started daydreaming about what
it would be like to take them off her. Maybe her coloring was a bit too pale,
and maybe when I looked at her from a certain angle I could see blue veins
crisscrossing her temples, but it was okay. It didn't matter. It didn't change
the way I was feeling. For a few minutes I almost forgot what I was there for.
I almost forgot about her murdering those people.

She
seemed happy as a lark as she prepared dinner. I could hear her humming softly
to the music. Every so often she'd look over at me and smile. And I made sure
to smile back.

I
tried to picture her killing those people, but I couldn't do it, at least not
the version of Charlotte that was now in the kitchen. The other version I could
see doing it, the mousy and nervous version that I'd first met at the hospital,
but not this one. The mousy, nervous one, though, I had no problem with. I
could picture her holding the morphine syringe. I could see her face set in
rigid concentration as she emptied the narcotic into the patient's IV tubing. I
could see the relief washing over her as the patient slipped into respiratory
failure. But it almost didn't seem possible that that was the same woman who
was now in the kitchen humming happily to herself.

I
guess I could understand why Charlotte did what she did. I committed so many
crimes to keep from literally drowning in gambling debts. In her own way, she
murdered those
four
patients
to keep from suffocating. While she didn't know
about
all the things I'd done, she knew about Phil. I
guess
at
some level,
we
understood each other.

Charlotte
had left the kitchen and was bringing
over a bottle
of
wine and a corkscrew.

'Dinner's
cooking in the oven,' she said. 'Would
you like to
open
the wine?'

'Sure.'

She
handed me the bottle, and I uncorked it.

'Wait,'
she said, and she went quickly into the kitchen
and
came back carrying a tray holding two wineglasses
and
a plate of
cheese. She placed the tray on the coffee table.