And he did, kicking high and out, aiming at my head. If it had connected, I’d likely have been dead, my neck broken.
So I ducked it.
DeWayne reared back, confusion coloring his face, and paused for a moment.
“Couldn’t we just skip this, son?”
Teeth bared, he tried again, rushing me with a flurry of blows, bladed hands here, fists there, and I ducked and slipped and dodged.
He followed me as I circled away, and when he high-kicked, I got out of the way, and his running-shod foot broke a mirror over the dresser, shards raining noisily. I circled back and he charged me and I stepped aside and he busted off the top half of a chair, making a stool out of it.
Finally he began to lose his cool, which isn’t a part of any martial arts program I know of; but you couldn’t blame the poor bastard-I was frustrating the hell out of him, avoiding his every blow, never raising my hands. I didn’t even bother taunting him, ignoring anything he said to me (“Stand still, gramps!”) and, with the mini-suite half demolished, he went for broke with a flying kick that I stepped aside for, and he crashed to the floor with a whump.
I just stood there, arms folded causually, not having broken a sweat, while he got to his feet, then bent over, exhausted, panting, pausing with his hands on his thighs.
“ Je — sus,” he said, trying hard to catch his breath, still hunkered over, “ Je — sus…why don’t you…you… fuckin’…fuckin’ do something?”
I slammed a fist into the side of his head, connecting with his ear and temple, and the big guy went down, in a pile.
He wasn’t out, but he was out of it, and when he finally looked back up at me, pitifully-his face red and fully sweat-beaded, his ear bleeding from the side of his head where I’d hit him-the nine millimeter was back in my hand, its dark eye staring him down.
“See, DeWayne? You do need a shower.”
That made him slump some more, as if all the remaining energy just drained out of him, but he was still breathing hard. He sat there, kind of sideways, his legs sprawled, like a cripple whose faith-healing hadn’t taken.
“Just,” he said, and heaved a couple breaths, and then tried again: “Just do it. Awright? Just…fucking… kill me.”
I shook my head and my expression was fairly pleasant. “I’m not gonna kill you, kid. Strip.”
Allowing himself the luxury of being reassured, DeWayne somehow got to his feet-it was kind of like watching one of those demolition-of-a-building film clips played backward, a structure reassembling itself-and once again, back to slow motion, he began to unbutton his shirt.
No tricks.
No attacks.
No surprises.
All he did was perform the least interesting striptease I have ever witnessed, discreetly turning his back to me at the finish, his arms-muscular, decorated with various USMC tattoos-hanging as slack as his muscular buttocks were taut.
He glanced back at me for his orders.
“The shitter,” I told him.
And I marched the dejected DeWayne into the bathroom. The young soldier wasn’t looking for an escape route, or at least I didn’t think he was. He seemed relatively unafraid, probably figuring I’d have killed him by now, if that was the point.
Just inside the cramped bathroom, he again looked over his shoulder and said, “You mind a little friendly advice? Don’t tangle asses with Mr. Green. I know you’re not happy about how this went down. But just…go your own way.”
“Semper fi, Mac,” I said.
There was no tub, just a shower stall with the familiar pebbled glass.
He swallowed. “Now what?”
“Get in.”
This seemed to alarm him, and his head swivelled on the muscular neck. “What the fuck for?”
Keeping it low-key, sticking the nine back in my waistband, I said, “I’m going to wedge something against the door, and lock you in. Buy me some time.”
“I told you I wouldn’t-”
“Right. Get in.”
Compliantly, DeWayne opened the door and stepped in the stall, and stood there with a good-size dick hanging and an expression that was neither moronic nor intelligent-perfect makings for a Marine.
“And?” he asked.
“And,” I said, “be careful, DeWayne. You’d be surprised how many accidents happen in the bathroom.”
He squinted at me, not getting that, and I used both hands to slam his head into the shower stall wall, with all the force I could muster.
The sound of his skull cracking wasn’t loud but it was distinct, and perhaps DeWayne even had time to hear it; either way, he was already dead, wide-eyed and frozen in time, as he slid slowly down the wall, leaving a bloody snail-smear behind him.
He sat there quietly, pretty blue eyes staring into eternity, his limbs like kindling, as I unwrapped a motel bar of soap and then flipped the thing to land near DeWayne’s big dead feet. I’d been careful to bash his head into the wall on the side where my fist had hit him earlier, the only blow I’d delivered in our hand-to-hand exercise.
Then I turned on the shower, nice and hot (to make time of death a mystery), and let the steamy spray do its tapdance on the corpse.
I hadn’t touched much in the room-the soap would be worn down by the needles of water-so I didn’t have much cleaning up to do.
Not in Homewood I didn’t.
Fifteen
The massive ornate granite gravestone was a family affair, reading on top:
MARY ANN GREEN
(1940–1985)
Beloved Wife and Mother
JONAH ALLEN GREEN
(1938-) and below:
JANET ANN GREEN
(1975–2005)
JULIA SUSAN GREEN
(1985-)
Cherished Daughter
From my post behind some rich man’s mausoleum, I couldn’t see that lettering; but I’d been at the cemetery since last night, and had taken in the inscription by moonlight. I’d been by far the first to get here for Janet Green’s farewell appearance.
Her casket, on the other hand, I could easily see from here, my position elevated enough to view the copper capsule, which had already been deposited in the ground, the metallic tubes of the lowering device still in place. I’d skipped the funeral, not really feeling wanted, and the graveside ceremony was long since over.
The morning was crisp and cold with moving clouds that sent phantom-like shadows gliding across the snow-brushed grounds of Oak Brook Memorial Cemetery. The mourners had drifted away, though a few lingered to pay their respects to the grieving father-Jonah Green, in his dark gray Saville Row topcoat, saying nothing, just
