Wayne was a fuck-up, honey. Real loser. He made enemies faster than most folks make spit. Made a whole lot of people out there mad as hell. Tonight they took care of one problem. You, and I guess the boy now, are another one. Talk to the cops all you like, is what I’m sayin’ here. Won’t make no difference.”
He checked over his shoulder, to be sure Pete wasn’t up to anything, and satisfied that he wasn’t, cocked the hammer on the gun. “Don’t,” she whispered.
Red’s attention on her body increased. “That no-good son of a bitch didn’t deserve a fine hunny like you,” he said. “Soon’s he brought you up here and showed you to me, I told him he’d make more money if he put you on the streets. But he was the jealous type, as I’m sure you know.” He slid his hand down her chest, parting her robe with his thumb.
“Please don’t.”
“He didn’t want nobody havin’ his woman,” Red continued. “Which don’t make no sense considerin’ he liked to brag about whuppin’ you. Man didn’t know how to treat a lady. But I do.”
His hand slid down over her stomach and lower, but Louise kept her knees pressed tightly together. It was no use. Red’s insistence came with the threat of death if she denied him. She winced as his rough fingers dug between them.
“Red, stop… I don’t want the boy to see this. He’s been through enough.”
“Shit,” Red replied. “We’ve all been through enough, ain’t we?” he said with a grin as he slipped his fingers inside her, turned his head and smiled at Pete, who Louise realized was suddenly standing very close behind him, his face lost in shadow.
Red grunted. “Now what the f—?”
Abruptly, Louise realized the boy’s intent and immediately grabbed Red’s hand, jerking the gun away from beneath her chin. It went off, deafening her and blowing a hole in the wall by the door as the light from the muzzle filled the room, just long enough for her to see Pete drive a shard of the broken TV screen into Red’s eye.
-23-
Finch couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so drunk. If not for the alley wall, he knew he’d be on his face right now, perhaps singing into a puddle or laughing at some half-remembered joke. Very carefully he let himself slide down until he was on his haunches, his back pressed against the red brick wall of Rita’s Bar. A light breeze played with his hair, and crept down the back of his neck into his jacket. He shivered, momentarily thankful for the numbing effects of alcohol.
The buildings around the cobblestone alley were too tall for him to be able to see if there was a moon tonight. Not that he cared. The moon was for romantics, and even if he’d been one in his younger days, he’d long forgotten how to be one now. He turned his head and looked to the mouth of the alley, where Beau, who had remained perfectly sober thanks to a night spent sipping orange juice, was holding open the door of a taxi as a tall black woman touched his cheek and smiled the kind of smile Finch had only ever known once in his life and now could scarcely recall. It made him feel suddenly isolated and terribly alone, and he wished Beau would either hurry up and say his goodbyes to the woman—Georgia, her name was—or else jump in the cab with her and take off, so Finch at least would know the score.
A moment later, her feet lost in a writhing red-tinged river of exhaust fumes, Georgia kissed Beau long and hard, then vanished into the darkness inside the cab. Beau stood for a moment, hands in his pockets, and watched as it pulled away. Then he turned and started back up the alley toward Finch.
“You still with me?” he called out.
“Barely.”
“Well, don’t quit on me just yet. We got things to discuss.”
Finch knew he was right, but at that moment he found himself wishing that his friend had accompanied the woman home. He didn’t want to think anymore. Didn’t want to talk anymore. He just wanted to sleep. At home. In the alley. Wherever. He was tired of thinking. Tired of feeling as if his head was going to explode from all the anger inside it, and the sorrow. The sorrow was worse because it came unbidden, and unlike the anger, which demanded action, pain, a release of any kind, sorrow asked nothing but for him to just be still while it spread through him like a cancer and drained his resolve, his will to do anything but sleep and feel sorry for himself.
“Hey.” Beau nudged him with his foot, and Finch looked up, startled. Without knowing it, he’d started to doze off, and now, like stop-motion animation, his friend had somehow moved from the alley entrance and materialized right in front of him.
“Jesus,” Finch said and rubbed a hand over his face. “What a lightweight, huh?”
“We ain’t kids anymore, man.”
“No shit. Too bad, too. I had a lot of fun as a kid.”
“Most folks do until they get saddled with responsibility.”
Beau plucked two beer crates from beside the dumpster to their right, and set them down—one for himself, one for Finch. Glad to take the pressure off his aching knees, Finch nodded his thanks and lowered himself onto the crate, one hand against the wall to steady himself.
“Man, you’re in bad shape,” Beau said, laughing.
“You mean because of the beer, or otherwise?”
Beau joined him, their shoulders touching. “The beer,” he replied. “Not that I don’t think you ain’t messed up enough without it.”
Finch had to narrow his eyes to dissuade double vision. He hated being this drunk, and had only allowed himself to reach this point because of the euphoria it had promised, and which, for a brief spell, had delivered. Now though, he was sad, angry, and more than a little miserable, every speck of those feelings directed inward despite the availability of much better, more reasonable targets.
“I’m going to kill them, Beau,” he said, nodding slowly. “Every fucking one of them. And I don’t care what happens because of it. They had no right to do what they did.”
Beau sighed. “No, they didn’t. But if you’re hell-bent on lookin’ for fairness, you’re on the wrong damn planet.”
Finch squinted at him. “The fuck’s that mean? I know what the world’s like. Doesn’t make a goddamn bit of difference. Look at the World Trade Center. Thing comes down, the whole nation gets mad and demands justice. The President sends us in to kick the shit out of them. Now all of a sudden people are complaining about his choices, and no one’s demanding anything anymore other than that he wise the hell up.”
“What’s your point?”
“Point is, I’ve never seen a bigger tragedy than 9/11, and yet everybody not directly related to the victims seemed to get over it real quick.”
Beau shrugged. “It’s the nature of people, I guess. We’re designed to grieve and mourn, and do what we can to move on.”
Finch scowled. “Yeah? Well, not me.”
“Not you,” Beau echoed. He sounded resigned.
“Let me ask you something,” Finch said, straightening so he could appraise him. “If those terrorists hadn’t used planes…if instead they’d sat in their cars a few blocks away…say a dozen of them, and used remote detonators to set bombs off to bring those buildings down…”
“Yeah?”
“And after it was done…people discovered those guys sitting in their cars congratulating each other.”
Beau said nothing, waited for him to continue.
Finch did. “What do you think would have happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Aw c’mon,” Finch said, throwing his hands up in disgust. “You know
