hours of waiting and suffering insults and inaction, of watching television and knowing that one could not have any of the bright baubles paraded there … not the cars, not the houses, not the clothes, not the beautiful women, not even the white skin … and, more important, these seconds of violence were the
In his fitful dreams Bremen pimp-strutted down dark alleys, the pistol in his waistband, searching for someone with the wrong color, the wrong expression on his or her face. He became the Giver of Pain.
Others in the plastic-tarp village ignored Bremen’s cries and moans in the night.
It was not merely gang members and the inner-city poor who fueled Bremen’s nightmares. As he sat in the cool shade of an alley mouth on an evening in late June, Bremen suffered the thoughts of the shoppers strolling by on the Sixteenth Street Mall.
White. Middle class. Neurotic, psychotic, paranoid, fueled by an anger and frustration as real as the impotent rage of the crack-charged Blood or Crip. Everyone was angry at someone and that anger smoldered on, fogging minds like smoke from a slow flame.
Bremen drank his wine from a brown bag, nursed his ever-present headache, and occasionally glanced out of the alley at passing forms. Sometimes it was hard to match up the blazing beacons of their angry thoughts with the gray shades of their bodies.
That middle-aged white woman in shorts and a too-tight blouse, Maxine: she had twice tried to poison her sister for the title to their father’s unused land in the mountains. Twice the sister had survived and twice Maxine had rushed to her side in the hospital, bemoaning the bad luck of botulism. The next time, thought Maxine, she would take her sister up to the old house on Daddy’s property, feed her an ounce of arsenic in her chili, and stay there with her until she was cold.
The short man in the elevator shoes and Armani suit: Charles Ludlow Pierce. He was a lawyer, a defender of the civil rights of minorities, a contributor to half a dozen Denver charities, a frequent face, alongside that of his beaming wife Deirdre, in the photos of the
But it was the all-out, fists-in-the-face, orgasm-inducing, full-tilt “lessons” that Charles Ludlow Pierce credited with saving their marriage and his sanity. On those occasions Deirdre would be on “retreat” for a week or more at their home above Aspen.
Bremen lowered his eyes and drank his wine.
Suddenly he snapped his head up and stared out at the passing crowd until he picked out a man walking briskly by. Bremen left his bottle and brown bag behind and followed him.
The man continued east on Sixteenth Street, pausing in front of the glass-and-steel shopping concourse that was Tabor Center. The man deliberated going in to look at the suits in Brooks Brothers, decided against it, and continued east across Lawrence Street and onward down the open mall. An evening breeze from the foothills stirred the saplings along the bricked bus lane and cooled the city heat a bit. The man strolled on, taking no note of the bearded panhandler shuffling along half a block behind.
Bremen did not get his name. He did not care to know it. The rest was clear enough.
The man was dressed in a wrinkled gray suit. He had come from one of the office buildings on Fifteenth and was waiting for his bus to Cherry Creek. It would be another eighteen minutes before he could get the bus two blocks south at the mall terminus. The man was tall, six-three or six-four, and he carried his extra weight well. His hair was tied back in a queue, one of those middle-aged male ponytails that Gail had called a dork knob.
He went into the Brass Rail, a wood-and-brass yuppie bar across from the north end of Tabor Center. Bremen found a shady place between two buildings where he could watch the wall-to-ceiling windows of the bar. Rich light streamed down Sixteenth Street and turned the glass opaque.
It did not matter. Bremen knew precisely where the man sat, what he drank.
He finished his second scotch, glanced at his watch, and hurried out of the Brass Rail, walking at a rapid but unhurried clip west down Sixteenth. He was almost at the bus terminus when a wino came out of the shadows across from Gart Brothers and angled across the pavement toward him. He moved farther to the right, frowning his warning at the drunk. There was no one else in sight and the two of them were partially hidden by the berm of raised grass and concrete on the stairway below the bus stop.
“Beat it, pal,” he snapped, flicking his hand dismissively as the wino came within panhandling distance. The man had a wild, blond beard, wilder eyes behind tape-patched glasses, and was wearing a full raincoat despite the heat of the day. The wino did not move away.
He shook his head and moved to go around the wino.
“In a hurry?” asked the bum, his throat thick with phlegm. It was as if the man had not spoken for days.
“Fuck off,” he said, and turned toward the bus station.
Suddenly he was jerked backward, into the shadows of the stairs. He whirled around, pulling his suit free of the wino’s filthy fist. “What the fuck …” he began.
“Hurrying home to abuse Bonnie?” said the wino in a soft rasp. “Going to do it to her again tonight?”
He stared, jaw slack. A cold claw slid down his back. He felt sweat drip from his armpit and trickle downward under his blue oxford-cloth buttondown. “What?”
“You heard me, asshole. We know all about it. Everyone does. The police probably know, too. They’re probably waiting with Carla in your kitchen right now, asshole.”
He continued to stare, feeling the shock turn to pure anger and begin to burn like white kerosene. Whoever this mangy fuck was, however he … however he knew … he was six inches shorter and eighty pounds lighter. He could kill this wino fuck with one hand tied behind his back.…
“Why don’t you try to kill me then, child molester?” whispered the wino. Amazingly, the stairway and bit of sidewalk below it were still empty. The shadows were long.
“Goddamn fucking right I’ll …” he began, and stopped as the flame of anger grew stronger, then blossomed into an explosion of pure hate as the wino began grinning through his tangled beard at him. He balled his large hands into fists and took three steps toward the bum, telling himself to stop just short of killing the little fuck. He had almost killed the kid back in college. He’d try to stop before the wino fuck quit breathing, but it would feel
Jeremy Bremen took a step back as the man rushed him, fists rising. Bremen reached under his raincoat, swept out the two-by-four, and brought it around in a left-handed swing that had helped him bat .287 during his last year of college ball.
In the last possible second the man’s arms had come up to shield his face. Bremen smashed the long board into the man’s upper arms, again into his shoulders as he went down on the stairs.
The big man snarled something and struggled to his feet. Bremen hit him once in the solar plexus with the board and then smashed it over the back of the man’s head as he doubled over. He began rolling down the steps in
