“Sure.” His eyes glittered. “You keep telling yourself that, Pat, er, rick.”
I chuckled in spite of myself. The guy didn’t quit.
A traffic helicopter from one of the news stations flew over us and then made an arc over the expressway as the crush of rush hour began to swell on the elevated girders to my left.
“I really hate women,” Wesley said evenly, his eyes following the path of the helicopter. “As a species, intellectually, I find them…” He shrugged “…silly. But physically”-he smiled, rolled his eyes-“Christ, it’s all I can do to keep from genuflecting when a really gorgeous one walks by. Interesting paradox, don’t you think?”
“No,” I said. “You’re a misogynist, Wesley.”
He chuckled. “You mean like Cody Falk?” He clucked his tongue. “You couldn’t get me out of bed for rape. It’s pedestrian.”
“You’d prefer to reduce people to shells, that it?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Like your stepsister. Reduce her to nothing, so that the only way she can express her horror is sexually.”
He raised the eyebrow another notch. “She loved it. Are you kidding? Christ, Pat-whatever the fuck your name is-isn’t that what sex is all about? Oblivion. And don’t give me this PC rhetoric about spiritual commingling and making love. Sex is about fucking. Sex is about regressing to our most animalistic state. Caveman. Private. Pre-Ur. We slurp and scratch and bite and groan like animals. All the drugs and marital aids and whips and chains and variances we add to the stew are all just extras meant to heighten-no, accomplish-the same thing. Oblivion. A regressive state that transports us back centuries and de-evolves us. It’s fucking, Pat. It’s oblivion.”
I clapped. “Terrific speech.”
He took a bow. “You like that?”
“You’ve practiced it.”
“It’s been tweaked over the years, sure.”
“Thing is, Wes-”
“What’s ‘the thing,’ Pat? Tell me.”
“You can’t explain poetry to a computer. You can teach it rhyme or meter, but it doesn’t understand beauty. Nuance. Essence. You don’t understand making love. That doesn’t mean a higher state-beyond fucking-doesn’t exist.”
“Is that what you’re shooting for with Vanessa Moore? A higher sexual state? The spirituality inherent in making love?”
“No,” I said, “we’re just fuck buddies.”
He chuckled. “You ever felt love, Pat? For a woman?”
“Sure.”
“Ever achieved that spiritual state you speak of?”
“Yup.”
He nodded. “So where is she now? Or were there more than one? Where are they now? I mean, if it was so great, so fucking spiritual, why aren’t you with one of them instead of talking to me and occasionally dipping your wick in Vanessa Moore?”
I didn’t have an answer. At least not one I felt like attempting to explain to Wesley.
It was a hell of a point, though. If love dies, if relationships deteriorate, if what was making love reverts back to having sex, then was it ever love to begin with? Or just something we sell ourselves on to distance ourselves from the beasts?
“When I came in my own stepsister,” Wesley said, “it purified her. It was voluntary, consensual sex, Pat, I assure you. And she loved it. And thereby found her essence, her true self.” He turned his back to me, looked out as the helicopter made a wide circle over the Broadway Bridge and headed back toward us. “By facing her true self, all the illusions she’d used to prop herself up shattered. And she shattered. It broke her. It could have built her, if she’d been strong enough, brave enough, but it broke her.” He turned back to me.
“Or you did,” I said. “Some would say Karen was destroyed by you, Wes.”
He shrugged. “We all have points we reach where either we break or we build. Karen found hers.”
“With your help.”
“Possibly. And if she’d built from there, who’s to say she wouldn’t be a happier person? What’s your breaking point, Pat? Have you ever wondered just which elements of your current version of happiness you could stand to lose before you were reduced to a glimmer of yourself? Which elements, eh? Your family? Your partner? Your car? Your friends? Your home? How soon before you’d be natal again? Stripped of embroidery? And then-then, Pat-who would you be? What would you do?”
“After I killed you, or before?”
“Why would you kill me?”
I held out my arms, stepped close to him. “Gee, I dunno, Wes. You take everything from some guys, they just figure they got nothing to lose.”
“Sure, Pat. Sure.” He placed a hand to his chest. “But don’t you think I’d have planned for contingencies like that?”
“You mean like hiring Stevie Zambuca to back me off?”
He dropped his eyes, looked at the bag in my hand.
“I presume Stevie’s services are no longer at my disposal.”
I tossed the bag between his feet. “That’s about the size of it. By the way, he took out a two-grand aggravation fee for himself. These mob guys, Wes, you know what I’m saying?”
He shook his head. “Patrick, Patrick, I hope you understand that I’ve been speaking hypothetically. I bear no animosity toward you.”
“Cool. Too bad I can’t say the same thing, Wes.”
He lowered his head until his chin touched his chest. “Patrick, trust me on this: You don’t want to play chess with me.”
I flicked the fingers of my right hand off his chin.
When he raised his head, the blithe cruelty in his eyes had been replaced by raw rage.
“Ah, yes, I do, Wes.”
“Tell you what-take that money, Pat.” His teeth were gritted, his face suddenly damp. “Take it and forget about me. I don’t feel like dealing with you now.”
“But I feel like dealing with you, Wes. A whole lot.”
He laughed. “Take the money, buddy.”
I met his laugh with my own. “I thought you could destroy me, pal. What’s up with that?”
The sleepy malevolence zapped the blue in his eyes again. “I can, Pat. It’s just a time issue at the moment.”
“A time issue? Wes, buddy, I got plenty of time. I’ve cleared my decks for you.”
Wesley’s jaw tightened and he pursed his lips and nodded several times to himself.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
I glanced to my left, spotted a Honda sitting on the expressway, fifty yards off and a few feet above us, the hood up. The hazards blinked and cars beeped and honked and a few people threw the finger as Angie kept her head under the hood, fiddled with some cables, and shot pictures of me and Wesley from the camera sitting atop the oil filter cover.
Wesley raised his head and stuck out his gloved hand. Bright green homicide shone in his eyes.
“War?” he asked.
I shook his gloved hand. “War,” I said. “You bet.”
25
“So where you parked, Wes?” I asked as we left the roof and descended the stairwell.
“Not in the garage, Pat. You’re on six, I believe.”
We reached the sixth-floor landing. Wesley stepped back from me a few feet. I leaned in the doorway.
