Bryan closed his eyes. The tangy taste of blood echoed on his tongue. “No. Worse.”
“Talk to a brotha. What happened?”
“Not really sure,” Bryan said. Then, in barely a breath: “I think I tore his arm off.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say what he really remembered:
“You tore his arm off,” Pookie said, nodding as if that was the most normal thing in the world. “Nice. And what did you do with said arm?”
Bryan closed his eyes, trying to crystallize his fuzzy dream-memories. “I don’t know. I woke up after that part. It was weird in another way, too.”
“How so?”
“I woke up sporting wood.”
Pookie let out his
“Thanks for sharing.”
“So you woke up with a rager, so what?”
Bryan chewed on his bottom lip. “Because I’m pretty sure I was turned on by the killing.”
Had the first dream also aroused him? No, not that he could remember. But murdering the kid, all that hate mixed up with lust, lust for pain, lust for
“Was it in the same place?” Pookie said. “The dream, did you recognize the location?”
Bryan started to talk, then paused, remembering the red blanket at Fern Street — he’d seen it in his dream, and then, impossibly, found it in real life. What if there was something from last night’s dream waiting for him, something far worse than an abandoned red blanket with yellow duckies and brown bunnies?
All it would take was one quick trip to set his mind at ease.
“Post and Meacham Place,” Bryan said.
“Roger, Adam-12,” Pookie said. “See the man, see the man at Post and Meacham.”
Pookie suddenly changed lanes for no reason, cutting off a Volkswagen as he headed for Post Street.
Bryan’s Dose of Reality
Pookie eased the Buick to a stop. Meacham Place looked quiet, empty. Beyond the black gate, the alley seemed undisturbed. Bits of trash dotted the cracked pavement. On the alley’s right side, four narrow trees stretched up, waiting for the brief window of time when the sun would be overhead and send light down between the two buildings.
Bryan stared at the abandoned, one-story building on the alley’s left. Paint- and graffiti-covered boards covered the old laundromat’s three arched windows. Across the alley from the urban ruin was a three-story, narrow brick building — well-kept, neat as you please. Decay on one side of the street, finery on the other: plenty of that to go around in San Francisco.
At the bottom corner of the abandoned building, where the sidewalk turned under the black gate and into the alley, Bryan saw the place where he had hidden under
a blanket watching for
[the
the boy to walk past.
Bryan rolled down his window … and
A scent, thick and rich, billowing out of the alley, carried by a breeze that slid into his nose. It was the same odor that had made him dizzy up on the roof with Paul Maloney and Polyester Rich.
The same, but also unique.
“Pooks, you smell that?”
He heard Pookie sniff. “Maybe. Smells like piss?”
Piss. Yes. Piss, but also something else.
Bryan looked to the four scraggly trees growing out of the narrow sidewalk. At the base of the farthest tree, wedged between the trunk and the building …
A blanket, dark and rumpled.
“Bri-Bri?”
A blanket, covering something about the size of a man.
A man … or a big teenage boy.
His tongue tasted the memory of hot blood. His mouth salivated.
“Hey, seriously,” Pookie said. “Are you okay?”
Bryan didn’t answer. He got out of the car and walked to the black gate. He held the square bars the way a prisoner holds his jail-cell door. The pointed tops of the bars were a good three feet above his head. In his dream, an effortless, standing jump had carried him over this gate, but in the waking world he saw that would be impossible.
The dark blanket looked … wet. Wetness on the sidewalk. Streaks of it. Wetness on the brick wall, in lines and patterns, in symbols and words. He vaguely recognized these things, but only saw bits of them out of the corner of his eye — he could not look away from the blanket.
The gate rattled as Bryan climbed it.
The sound of a car door shutting.
“Bryan, answer me, man.”
Bryan dropped down on the other side. He walked toward the blanket.
Behind him, the gate rattled again, followed by sound of big dress shoes hitting the pavement.
“Bryan, this is
Bryan didn’t answer. That scent, so overpowering.
“It’s on the walls,” Pookie said. “Jesus, I think they painted a picture in blood, right on the fucking walls.”
Bryan reached for the blanket. His fingers clenched on fabric,
He yanked the blanket away.
A ravaged corpse. Its right arm had been ripped off. A piece of collarbone jutted out from near the neck. The stomach had been cut to pieces, intestines dragged out then shoved back in like dirt stuffed back into a hole.
And that
But the hair … Bryan recognized the hair.
Black, curly, wiry.
To the left of the body, a white baseball hat streaked with blood spatter.
“Bryan.”
Pookie’s voice again. Something in his tone forced Bryan to turn. Pookie was staring at the mutilated body. He looked up at Bryan, his expression one of disbelief, perhaps even shock.
“Bryan, how did you know about this?”
Bryan didn’t have an answer. The smell of piss was so strong, it made his head spin.
Pookie’s right hand moved a touch closer to the left flap of his sport coat. “Bryan, did you do this?”
Bryan shook his head. “No. No way, man. You know I couldn’t do something like this.”
Pookie’s eyes looked so cold. Was this the face perps saw when he took them down? A happy-go-lucky man, unless you were in his sights, then Pookie Chang became serious business.
“Step out of the alley,” Pookie said. “Slowly. And keep your hands away from your gun.”
“Pooks, I’m telling you that I didn’t—”
“You
That was the million-dollar question. If there was an answer, did Bryan really want to know it?
