The Lazarus Heart (22 page)

Even before he saw the stainless-steel glint of the sharpened spoon in the man's hand, he knew the Cuban was there to kill him.

"Why?" Jared asked. The man raised his head a little, flared his nostrils wide as if he were sniffing the air to get Jared's scent, to be sure he had located a proper object for his hatred and the damage it could do.

"You're Poe. You're the queer bastard that killed all those people in New Orleans," he said.

Jared had long ago become too used to the presumption of his guilt, far too numbed to the denial of his innocence, to bother contradicting the Cuban.

"I'm Jared Poe," he said.

"You killed my brother," the man said, and took a step closer to Jared. "You killed my little brother and left him floating in the river like garbage for the fish to eat."

Jared caught a glimpse of the guard watching from just inside the doorway, a pale figure in the gloom, his eyes much too fascinated by what was about to happen to look away.

"I didn't kill your brother," Jared said, surprised at how calm he sounded, how steady his voice could be with his death standing only a few feet away. "I know you're not going to believe me, but I didn't kill anyone."

"Liar,"
the man said, spitting the word out like a bitter taste, and then he mumbled something else in Spanish that Jared didn't understand. He moved quickly, and even if Jared had been inclined to run, even if what he'd told Ruben Gonzalez all those months ago had been a lie, there would have been nowhere to go. So Jared took one small step backward and braced himself.

The Cuban's makeshift dagger went in just above his navel, made a little popping sound as it punched through skin and muscle to the vital organs underneath. The Cuban pulled the blade out and drove it back in a second time. Jared's knees buckled. He could feel the warm blood pumping out through his T-shirt, soaking into his jeans, spilling like piss down his leg. He saw it red and sticky on the man's hand and dripping in dark spatters to the white limestone gravel.

"I didn't," Jared whispered, sinking to the ground. "I didn't kill anyone."

"No, man," the Cuban sneered. "That ain't why they put motherfuckers in here, for doin' nothing to people."

The Cuban turned and walked away, left Jared kneeling in the dirt and blood, his life pouring out of the hole in his belly. He looked up once. The Cuban was gone and the guard was still standing in the shadows, watching, smiling. Jared fell over on his side, starting to feel the pain in his guts through the shock, and in a little while someone called for a doctor.

He supposes some people in his present situation-if in fact anyone has ever
been
in this crazy situation before-would have gone back to Angola and killed the Cuban. Jared cannot see the point.

The Cuban was as much a force of nature as this storm, a happenstance that killed him before the state of Louisiana could. Mostly; though, he can't imagine killing the Cuban because he doesn't blame the guy for killing him. The Cuban had genuinely believed he was killing the man who'd tortured his brother to death. In his place, Jared would have done-
would
do-the same.

Jared stands on the roof of the little cottage behind the glass-studded wall. The roof is only slightly pitched, and there is a skylight that must have been added fairly recently. The rain falls on him, a thousand tiny hammers every second, and rushes around his feet on its way to the overflowing gutters. The lightning and thunder dance above the city, all flash and bluster.

Jared kneels beside the skylight and looks inside.

In a room painted the color of dead violets John Harrod is fucking a black girl up the ass. She grips the shimmering silk sheets in both hands and bucks in time to Harrod's thrusts. Her mouth is open, but Jared can't hear her over the storm. Harrod's lips are curled back to show his perfect white teeth, the tip of his tongue protruding between them like a bit of some invertebrate trying to escape its shell.

Jared puts one hand against the glass.
You bastard,
he thinks.
You goddamned hypocritical bastard.
There are suddenly too many things in his head at once, images of Benny and the trial, the thing that the killer left of Benny, the Cuban and Lucrece and a smiling portrait of John Henry Harrod with his wife and two children. Jared pushes slightly against the skylight. He can feel that it would break very easily.

The crow lands on the skylight and caws loudly at Jared, loud even over the roar of the storm. The wind rips at them both, threatens to pluck them from this rooftop and fling them into the taller buildings, press them flat like stray leaves or newspapers against the old brick walls.

"What the fuck do you want?" Jared sneers at her from behind the mask, a sneer to match Harrod's down below. The crow tucks her wings close to her body, huddles against the glass, making a smaller target for the wind.

"I
have
to do this," he tells her. "That motherfucker isn't going to get away with what he did."

And then he hears Lucrece, her voice as clear as if he was back in the apartment with her, as if she were standing in front of him with no wind to rip away the sound.

"This isn't going to bring Benny back to you," she says, and the big black bird cocks her head to one side.

"So now you're a fucking ventriloquist?"

The crow loses her footing and is blown a few inches across the slick glass.

"It doesn't
matter."
Jared isn't sure whether he's speaking to the crow or Lucrece or both, and he doesn't really care. "Because of Harrod, the monster that killed Benny is still out there somewhere ..."

"You can't do this," Lucrece says as the crow struggles to keep her grip on the skylight, her tiny claws skating on the glass. "Killing Harrod will only make a monster of you too, Jared."

He laughs at her, that she could possibly be so fucking naive after all she's seen, after her life and her brother's death. The laugh feels good, like he's coughing up something poisoned, something burning deep in his belly.

"Get a clue, babe. Haven't you looked in a mirror lately? We're
all
monsters." "You can
not
do this, Jared," she says again.

"Watch me," he replies. With one arm he sweeps the crow aside, gives the wind a helping hand. The bird flutters away into the murky sky.

Jared smashes the skylight, one punch and it shatters just as easily as he imagined it would. The glass and the rain pour down on Harrod and his whore. Jared follows right behind.

He lands on his feet beside the bed. The woman is already screaming. There are jagged shards of glass protruding from her back and buttocks, and she's frantically scrambling away from Harrod, clawing her way toward the bed's wicker headboard. Harrod turns to face Jared, his trousers in a pile around his ankles and his wet, uncircumcised penis dangling loose inside its condom, already going limp, shriveling up like a salted slug.

"At least you wore a goddamn rubber, you filthy pig," Jared says. He's still laughing, practically giggling now; whatever's broken loose inside him is still getting out, a fury he's carried to the grave and back, and the laughter seems to make as much sense as anything else. "Wouldn't want to risk AIDS. That's a fag death."

"Who . . . who . . . who . . ." Harrod says, the word coughed out through the perfect, astonished O of his mouth.

"Wrong bird." Jared snickers and shoves Harrod, presses one hand against the man's bare chest and sends him stumbling backward to crash against a vanity. Bottles of perfume and tubes of lipstick clatter to the floor. One of the bottles breaks and the room is instantly filled with the sickly, funereal smell of flowers.

"Who . . ." Harrod says again. Now he has one arm up to protect his face. "You're a slow learner, aren't you, Mr. Harrod?"

"Get out of here!" the girl on the bed screams. "Get out of here, motherfucker! I'm calling the fucking police!"

Jared ignores her and steps past the foot of the bed. Harrod is cowering in front of the vanity, nowhere left for him to run. His breath is labored, uneven.

"Look
at me, John Harrod," Jared says. He is trying hard to stop laughing. He bites down on his tongue, but that's funny too. Harrod peeks up at him, terrified eyes peering past the shelter of his hairy forearms, and that's absolutely fucking hilarious.

"I know a rhyme, John Harrod. Just a little nursery rhyme my mother taught me.

You're not afraid of a little nursery rhyme, are you?"

"Get out of my house!" the woman screams behind him. Harrod doesn't say a word.

"'There were three crows sat on a tree, They were as black as black can be. One of them said to his mate:

What shall we do for grub to eat?'"

"I
said
to get the fuck out of my house, you fucking weirdo!
Now!"
Jared hears the box springs creak behind him. He leans over and punches Harrod, feels the bridge of the man's nose break. Blood gushes down Harrod's chin, falls in bright spatters to the polished floorboards. Harrod gasps and cups his hands together to shield his wounded face.

"Sorry. But you really weren't paying attention, were you? I don't have all day.

There's a hurricane coming. . ."

"Who the hell
are
you?" Harrod whispers. He sounds as afraid as Jared has ever heard anyone sound, a complicated, suffocating sort of fear that Jared is gratified to hear.

"Well, that's the question, now isn't it? But where was I?" Jared scratches his head like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of
Oz.

"What do you want?" Harrod begs. "Just please tell me what the fuck you
want
!
"

Jared finishes the rhyme:

"'There's an old dead horse in yonder lane, Whose body has been lately slain.

We'll fly upon his old breastbone, And pluck his eyes out,
one by one.'"

Harrod begins to cry. Jared kneels next to him in mock concern. "Jesus, that's an awful thing to teach a little kid, don't you think?"

Harrod makes a choking noise and looks at the blood in his hands.

"Now maybe if she'd read to me from the Bible like your mother must've done for you, maybe then I'd have turned out to be a
good
man just like you, Mr. Harrod."

"All right, you asshole, I've had
enough
of this shit!" Jared turns toward the naked woman on the bed just as she pumps the huge shotgun in her hands. There are shells scattered like candy across the rumpled sheets.

Jared drops to the floor and rolls away from the bed, away from Harrod. The boom of the gun is deafening in the small bedroom, thunder trapped and wanting out.

Jared knows he's been hit before he even stops moving. He staggers to his feet as she's reloading, ejecting the spent shells and slipping two new ones into the chamber. There's a hole in his side as big an orange and he gets a whiff of his own ruptured bowels.

"Jesus Christ, Harrod. Where'd you
find
this bitch?" Jared dives for the bed. The woman raises the shotgun, takes aim down the long double barrel, but a fraction of a second later he's wrestling the gun from her hands. She screams again and slides to the floor.

"This hasn't got anything to do with you, lady, so stay the fuck out of it and you're not going to get hurt."

Seeing his chance, Harrod kicks the tangle of his pants away and makes a dash for the door. He is gone before Jared can do anything but curse his pale, skinny, fleeing ass.

John Harrod slams the door behind him as he exits the cottage, the pied-a-terre where he's installed a succession of women for three years now, mostly blacks and Latinas. The storm seizes him immediately, broadsides him. He slips down the front

steps and lands in a muddy heap between the Oldsmobile and the house. His ears are ringing from the shotgun blast and his mouth is full of blood from his broken nose.

He almost panics when he reaches for the keys and his fucking pants aren't even there, but then he remembers the extra set tucked above the sun visor. He slides in behind the wheel and pulls the door shut, locking out the storm and the crazy son of a bitch in the white Mardi Gras mask.

John Harrod folds down the visor and the keys tumble out into his naked lap, cold metal against his bare thigh. He tries to start the car with the trunk key on his first attempt and it

takes him a moment to find the right one. His heart is ticking off the seconds like a countdown. Then there's a sharp scratching sound and he squints through the rain beating down on the windshield. There is a big black bird standing on the hood of the car, staring in at him.

There were three crows sat on a tree, They were as black as black can be . . .

"Oh, God," he mutters. He turns the key in the ignition and stomps the gas pedal. The car roars to life momentarily; then the motor coughs, sputters, and dies. The crow spreads its wings and caws loudly, hops toward him, and pecks at the windshield.

Harrod turns the key again, mashes the accelerator to the floor. This time the engine only chugs weakly a couple of times before it's quiet again.

The Oldsmobile begins to fill with the smell of gasoline and he knows that he's flooded the engine. When he glances out the windshield the bird is gone. Harrod breathes a nervous sigh of relief and tells himself to calm down.
No way that fucker could have gotten the gun away from Tonya without getting his face blown off,
he thinks.
All you gotta do now, buddy, is calm the fuck down.

And then something dark drops out of the sky and crashes down onto the hood of the Olds. The car rocks violently from the impact. Where the bird was seconds before, the man in the grinning white mask stands now, pointing the Remington shotgun straight at Harrod's head.

And pluck his eyes out, one by one.

Harrod screams, opens his mouth wide and screams like a woman, as the man turns the gun around and slams the butt against the windshield. It cracks, spiderwebs, and on the second blow caves in, spraying Harrod with diamond bits of safety glass. The rain and wind spill through the hole. Harrod reaches for the .38 he keeps hidden beneath the seat.