Here’s the truth I’m left with: if I hadn’t been afraid of losing Tory-boy to those Nazi idiots, I wouldn’t have blown up their fort, and doing that is what got me caught.
But there’s a stronger truth, and that’s the one I hold closest: whatever good is in me, whatever honor I have, it all came from my little brother.
ow that I think it through—and I do that every night—I realize that’s where my train went off the tracks. Not where, actually—more like Why. If I’d stuck straight to business, me and Tory-boy would still be going on just like we always had.
It really started with Judakowski. Jayne Dyson had never told me about the man who … did what he did to set her on the only path she was allowed to walk. But after Judakowski beat her to death, it was the same as if she had.
Sometimes, I get so full of how smart I am that I forget there’s others just as smart. And when it comes to certain things, a whole lot smarter.
I was at Lansdale’s place. After we’d finished talking over some job that needed doing, he kind of casually mentioned how terrible it was, what had happened to Miss Jayne Dyson.
I don’t think I showed anything on my face, even when he told me how the cops said whoever did that to her was some kind of animal—tore her up so bad they could tell it was the first time anyone had ever … had her that way.
She had horrible bruising on her where no woman should have. And everybody knew Miss Jayne Dyson wouldn’t let anybody do something like that to her, no matter how much they offered.
“I’ll tell anyone, Miss Jayne Dyson was a real lady,” Lansdale said that night. He looked genuinely sad. “But even if she was … something other than a lady, she didn’t deserve what was done to her.”
I agreed with him. It was no secret that I had visited her a number of times. There’s no secrets in the part of town where she lived. But I think everyone assumed my visits were all about Tory-boy.
Lansdale hadn’t made that assumption, although I didn’t figure that out until later.
“She must’ve fought like a wildcat,” he told me. “I heard Judakowski’s face is going to be marked for life.”
“Judakowski?”
“Sure,” Lansdale said. “I think his last stay in the penitentiary gave him a taste for … well, you know what I’m saying, don’t you, Esau?”
“Yes, I do. But why would he …? I mean, there’s plenty of other …”
“That’s Judakowski,” Lansdale said, shrugging his shoulders. “He’s not a man you can say no to, not when he thinks he’s got power over you. He’s not even denying he did it. See Henry over there?” Lansdale nodded his head in the direction of a man sitting at the bar, his back to us. “He was in the Double-J a couple of nights ago. Judakowski has his own table, naturally, but Henry was close enough to hear him say, ‘You can’t rape a whore,’ like he was reciting a verse from the Good Book.
“Of course, nobody argued with him. A man’d have to be crazy to do that in Judakowski’s own place, especially when he was all liquored up.”
Then Lansdale went back to talking about other things.
hen I called and told Judakowski there was something I wanted to talk over with him in private, I could see right inside his head. Judakowski was the kind of man who thought he knew the whole world just because he knew himself so good.
I could see him thinking I was going to offer to take Lansdale out if Judakowski would make me a partner. He knew that respect was really important to me, so he figured maybe I was sick of being paid by the job.
If he was right—and Judakowski would never even imagine otherwise—I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear me make that kind of offer; it would be too risky.
Judakowski himself was always looking over his own shoulder. He didn’t trust everyone in his own crew. And if he didn’t trust people who worked for him, why would I trust them myself?
What he didn’t figure on was me wheeling over to where he was sitting on a big tree stump in that clearing, working on a cigar. I wheeled over close enough to see his face. I had to see for myself those marks Miss Jayne Dyson had left.
“I’m proud of you,” I said.
Judakowski knew I wasn’t talking to him. But before he could open his mouth to ask a question, I shot him in the face. Right at the bridge of his nose. I didn’t want to spoil those rip scars on his cheeks if they decided on an open-casket sendoff.
The shot hardly made a sound. And nobody was ever going to trace the bullet in Judakowski’s brain to the gun in my hand. I’d made that pistol myself; I knew how to unmake it just as well.
I rolled up even closer. Then I held his head back by the hair and put two more bullets into his head, one for each eye.
It was peaceful and calm in that glade. The birds kept on singing while I laid the pistol in my lap and took out my wire cutters.
I left Judakowski’s tongue on his chest. More puzzle for the cops to solve, maybe. But, for sure, plenty enough to start lots of other tongues wagging.
I’m not spiritual. But I know Miss Jayne Dyson watched every move I made.
“Thank you,” I told her. “Thank you for everything. I swear on my brother, if I had known what was in his mind, I would have done this before he ever had a chance to hurt you.”
ll Tory-boy knew was that he drove me to where I told him, and waited by the van for me to come back. He didn’t know who I was meeting up with, much less why.
I guess someone might be able to trick things out of Tory-boy, if they asked the right questions. That’s why I’d always made sure to keep that kind of distance between what I did and what he knew. How was anyone going to make him tell what he didn’t know?
’d attended to Judakowski no more than a few weeks before when I was snatched up for atomizing those skinheads, or Nazis, or whatever they were calling themselves now.
Maybe I’m rambling now. Not being precise, the way I like to be. All of this is a lot of stuff to put down on paper. And, like I said, things around here never seem to happen in a straight line.
I guess it’s obvious by now that I killed Judakowski for my own reasons. And it’s even obvious that Lansdale had known that telling me how Miss Jayne Dyson had been raped to death had been signing Judakowski’s death warrant.
So now it’s time to tell the Why of that.
I once thought about my body and my mind as a single unit. That sounds strange, maybe—my mind can do all kinds of things, and my body can’t even carry me across a room. But what I’d been thinking about was the frozen part. My conscience should have stopped me from doing some things, so I told myself that it had just stopped working, as atrophied as my body.
“Atrophied.” I hated that word as much as I loved “inertia.” Once you start rolling, you stay rolling, true enough. But if you never use something, it just … rots. Only Tory-boy wouldn’t let my legs rot. He’d grab my ankles and just work my legs. It hurt a bit, but I remember it like a treat. A treat I’ll never have again now.
I’m just dancing around the perimeter, and I know it. So here’s how it happened. I was over to Miss Jayne Dyson’s one afternoon. That was the way we worked it; if Tory-boy had a question that a woman should be answering for him, I’d call Miss Dyson and make an appointment. Then we’d drive over there.
I always left them alone. I knew it would be easier for Tory-boy that way.
He was in her little parlor a good half-hour that time. It takes Tory-boy a while to get something down. But once he gets it, he keeps it.
I just waited on Miss Dyson’s porch. I knew people could see me out there, but it didn’t bother me a bit. None of those spike-tongued women would ever be talking about me to Miss Webb. And I didn’t care who else they told. Or what they told them.
When Tory-boy finally came out, he really wanted to go see someone. Some girl, I guess.
