Holy Death (17 page)

He grabbed the back of the fat kid’s shirt. “Get up, goddamn it.”

Fat kid fanned his hand at the side of his head. “She shot me! I’m shot! I’m fucking dying!”

“Get up! Get up or I’ll kill you!”

“I can’t...I can’t....I can’t...”

Lafitte kicked him on the leg. He screeched real bad. Lafitte grabbed him under the arm. “Get the fuck up.” Couldn’t lift him, but he kept the pressure on. Tried to keep the skin on his hands from shredding more, but goddamn, what was he supposed to do?

Kid finally got up and looked back over his shoulder. “YP? You hear me, man?”

“Guy’s dead. Get out of here!” Hand on his shirt again, not going to let this one run far. He was the path to DeVaughn. The yellow-brick road. They both made it out front, where the whole yard was filled with neighbors and kids and people holding up their phones to make this shit go viral, which was the last thing Lafitte needed. Nothing he could do.

He let go of the fat kid’s shirt, and he dropped onto the grass and rolled around, starting up with the fanning again, crying, “Shit, Jesus, shit, Jesus, shit, help me Jesus!”

Lafitte found Jimena on her knees in the yard, her shirt and hands stained black with ash, but otherwise alright, jabbering to another Spanish-speaking neighbor who was standing over her shoulder.

Manuel wasn’t back yet, still no nitro. Lafitte had run out of time. He needed to get out of here now, and this fat kid was going along. But Lafitte finally got a good look at his palms, scalded through and through. But he felt...numb. Going into shock.

Fuck shock. Shock was for later. Shock was for people who could afford it.

Friendly neighbors were starting to pay attention to him now. Asking if he needed an ambulance or a towel or, Jesus,
Are you okay are you okay are you okay
?

“Fuck no, I’m not okay! Can’t you see I’m not fucking okay?”

All of them stared at his face, his scalp, his hands. “Oh. My. God.”

“Get me some duct tape. Right now. I need some duct tape.”

One of the neighbors threw a beach towel over Lafitte’s shoulder but was too freaked to throw it across both shoulders, so he caught it in his hand before it fell to the ground. Felt like grabbing a handful of rusty steel wool. Peeling it off was worse. Sirens coming. There were always sirens coming. He couldn’t get through a full day anymore without sirens coming, let alone today when it was every hour, it seemed. More sirens. Who were they this time? Cops first? Firetrucks? Ambulance?

Ambulance.

He glanced over at Jimena, standing among her friends now, wild gestures with her hands, telling the story. Leaving out Lafitte, he hoped. Maybe he was a visiting cousin. She would tell them something believable. But the authorities would know. They would figure it out and give her and Manuel a hard time, goddamn it. More of Lafitte’s bizarro King Midas touch.

“Here!”

One of the neighbors was back with a half-used roll of duct tape. Big, thick, silver duct tape. Lafitte grabbed it and started at his wrist and taped one of his hands, one two three wraps, leaving his fingers and thumb free. They’d gotten skinned too, but not as bad. He still needed them. He flexed the silver hand. Hurt like all holy fuck, but he could deal. He started to wrap the other one when someone reached out and grabbed his arm.

“Help’s on the way! You don’t have to!”

Lafitte kept wrapping. “They can’t help me. Thanks, though.”

He held onto the duct tape, but then, pain coming back to him, remembered there was a fucking knife in his back. He handed the tape to the well-wisher. “See the knife? Pull it out. Slap some tape on it.”

“But help’s coming, it’s almost here, it’ll be here in a minute.”

He held up the roll of tape. “Anybody?”

One of the slack-jawed teenagers standing around, shirtless, skateboard on the ground beside him, stepped up. “Yeah, cool.”

Kid got the knife out and the tape patch on, said it was still bleeding.

“Fuck! More tape! Wrap the shoulder!”

Wrapped the shoulder, another neighbor helping now. Then around the upper arm to plug another hole. It felt awful, but the guys made sure the tape was tight and nothing was leaking. Good ol’ duct tape.

He broke through the crowd as the first fire truck showed up alongside a cop cruiser. For once, he was glad of the crowd. Good cover. The smoke had finally started pouring out the front door and through the roof, and even more people cramped themselves into the yard to watch as the cops shouted for everyone to “Get back! Across the street, now!” One of them called for back-up. An ambulance showed up. The road was getting thick with whirling lights and big machines.

Lafitte found the fat kid on the lawn where he’d left him, on his hands and knees now, trying to puke but not getting anywhere with it. A long string of spit and some dry hacks. Lafitte walked over and nudged him with his boot. “Let’s go.”

“Told you...told you I was
dying
here, man.” Fat kid was going to hyperventilate. “I need help! I need help now! I need my grampa. Get my grampa over here!”

Another nudge, harder. Lafitte scooped under his arm, not caring if the kid wanted to move or not. “We ain’t got time. You want to talk to cops or talk to DeVaughn?”

“Serious?”

“Cops? DeVaughn? You know where DeVaughn is?”

“I want...I want...I want a doctor, man.”

Lafitte knelt beside him. Hissed, “Cops’ll give you a doctor. After they’re done with you, I mean. Hey, look at this.”

The kid turned his head. Lafitte lifted the little knife, set the edge of it on the kid’s shredded ear. “Your friend left this in my shoulder. How about I finish off your ear there?”

“No, man! Please!”

“Get your ass up and get us the fuck out of here.”

Kid was slow, but he did as he was told.

“Good, good,” Lafitte said, loud enough to be heard. “We’re going to get you some help.”

Slung the kid’s elephant-leg-of-an-arm over his head—
Damn!
—and said, “Which one’s yours?”

“Got the...got the...the...”

They passed a cop, who asked if they needed help. Lafitte chinned towards the ambulance. “Heading over now.”

“Let me help?”

“I got it. You want to help Jimena? See her over there? She’s my aunt. She’s got some burns.”

“So do you! Jesus, fuck, man!”

“I’ll live.”

Young white cop sure enough didn’t want to carry around a freak like Lafitte and this fat ass black kid. Could see it in his eyes. “Okay, we’ll get your aunt some help, buddy.”

Fat kid finally got out, “It’s the Nissan? The big SUV?”

Lafitte held up his keys, punched the fob. The lights flickered and the doors clicked. They headed for it. A few feet, then a few inches, then Lafitte opened the back passenger door and told the fat kid, “Climb in.”

Took him a huge fucking effort. Now it got a different cop’s attention. He came over and said, “You can’t leave.”

“He’s got to go to the hospital!”

“Calm down, there’s EMTs right over there.”

“We don’t have time to wait, he got his ear burned off!”

“Hold up!” He turned and shouted to an EMT. Then back. “Hold up. We’ll get him there. Let this guy work on him first. No need to panic.”

The cop was older, in his forties, and Lafitte realized he knew the prick. His name tag, SPIVELY, and as quick is it clicked into Lafitte’s mind, it must have clicked in Spively’s, too, because his eyes went wide and his hand went for his pistol. Not even for the tazer or the pepper spray. Right for the gun. Lafitte got there right as Spively wrapped his hand over the grip. Lafitte held the man’s hand and his gun down down down, hard, gonna keep his gun in the holster and fuck you fuck you fuck you—

Lafitte said, “We really going to do this now?”

“Billy Lafitte, you are under arrest.” Straining. “You have...no
where
...to...
go.
”

“No, not you. You don’t get to bring me down.”

“Quit...
resisting
.” Louder.

Shit.

Lafitte headbutted the fuck out of the cop. He went limp. Lafitte reached around, held him up with one arm while prying the gun from his hand and holster with the other. He wasn’t out, stunned, same as Lafitte’s skull, too, but he gave Spively another loud
crack
to the forehead before dropping him, slamming the door, and running around to the driver’s side. Stumbling. Holding himself up, leaning against the SUV. Once inside, he grabbed the key from the fat kid and saw flashing blues and greens pulsing in and out of focus as he tried to find the ignition. Easier once he heard the gunshots. Saw the cops surrounding the Armada, pistols out.

Key, in. Crank. Go go go go!

Swerved around the fire truck directly ahead, two cruisers behind it, then up into someone’s yard. Fuck the street. He went right through a chainlink fence into a backyard, swerved again to avoid a swingset, an inflatable pool, an old man mowing his lawn. Through another chainlink fence. The next fence was plastic. Dogs, pretty sure he hit a dog. Shit, where was Kaiser? Jimena would keep him. Jimena would help him get home. Out the front gate and back on the road, and he needed to get himself gone fast.

Lafitte shouted into the back seat, “Where we going?”

“Oh Jesus oh God oh Grampa oh fuck oh fuck—”

“Focus, champ! DeVaughn! Where is DeVaughn?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Where’s your phone? Call him! Call him!”

“I lost my phone! Oh Jesus! I need my grampa, man! Take me home!”

“You get your grampa when I get DeVaughn!”

“Please!”

“Fuck please! DeVaughn!”

“Okay, okay, okay, I’ll call him, find me a phone, I call him, oh God it hurts it hurts so bad, man!”

The fat kid was all he had. Goddamn it. Worthless. He brushed his hand through his hair and forgot he had taped his hand and that his scalp was all crispy hair and blistered skin, felt the blisters breaking as the tape scraped across. Made him shiver all over. The shock, he couldn’t run from it for too much longer. His chest felt as if the fat kid was sitting on it. He had needed a couple days, that was all, a couple days to get his wind back, but he had gotten less than seven hours instead.

Getting dark. Sunset over the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe his last one, right? The way things were going...

Why not end it the same way Ginny did? Walk out into the Gulf and keep going, let it wash over him. That would be dignifying. The sharks might have at his body, the forces of nature might fuck up what was left royally before he washed back ashore, but he wouldn’t have known it. Some poor fucking cop would be responsible for cleaning up the mess. Some weak-stomached patrol officer would discover pieces of Lafitte and projectile vomit into the sand. Lafitte would be the dignified one. He would take a big drink of seawater and lose consciousness and the last thing he would hear is water.

He should have known the angel on his shoulder would get outvoted by the devil, who told him:
Not until DeVaughn is dead
.

Lafitte sighed. It hurt to sigh. The devil was right, even if Lafitte didn’t want him to be.

“Five minutes,” he told the fat kid. “You’re going to be alright, buddy.”

Highway 90. Beachfront. A beautiful summer evening. A wailing kid missing an ear in the backseat.

Better a missing ear than a missing head. He’d seen worse.

––––––––

T
he call from Lo-Wider was all wrong and the kid was smart enough to realize DeVaughn would know it, too. The tone, the pitch, the words themselves. Too formal. Too...something. A weird feeling.

DeVaughn told him where they could meet in Gulfport, the parking garage of the casino hotel. He hung up and thought about how to prepare. Either Lafitte had Lo-Wider as a hostage, or had flipped him over to his side. Didn’t matter. This thing was going to happen now, and DeVaughn wasn’t going to do the James Bond villain shit of talking so much that Bond escapes and murders his ass. They made fun of it so much, who was it, Austin Powers? And still, motherfuckers always got to toy with James Bond instead of just shoot his ass.

Not this time. Billy Lafitte ain’t no motherfucking James Bond. Never was, never will be.

They sat in the parking garage, in the new Lincoln MKZ they’d picked up at a rental joint. White one. All the extras. Still no connection between them and the dealership in Mobile, so as far as the rental place was concerned, they would get the car back in about five days, as soon as DeVaughn and Melissa “flew back home” from their vacation.

DeVaughn grinned thinking about it. The rental joint would never see this car again. DeVaughn wouldn’t be flying anywhere anytime soon. Melissa, god only knew what would happen to her. Prison? Or would she call the whole thing a kidnapping, big nigger forced me? That was okay, too. Whatever she had to do, he’d back her up. Whatever it took to keep her free. She was worth it. This whole day, if it ended with Lafitte dead and DeVaughn in true love with Melissa, will have been worth it.

He looked over at Melissa, one leg propped on the dash, the other stretched on the floorboard. Her seat was reclined some. She held her arms over her head, a yawn and a stretch. She caught him looking and smiled. Beamed.

She said, “Can I come out and say it? You don’t have to say it back or get all weird.”

“What?”

“Like, you don’t have to treat me any differently, or think I’m expecting something.”

“Girl, I love you, too. How’s that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, great, now you’re going to be all up on my jock all the time? I can’t be tied down.”

“But baby, baby please—”

Hand in his face. “Uhn-uh. You need to be there when I give you a call, but that’s the extent of it.”

They both cracked up. DeVaughn tried one more, “I promise, baby, I’ll be good.”

Melissa threw her head back and it was a full-on cackle. This was fun. When was the last time he’d been with someone and it was fun this way? He shook his head. “Can you tell me what’s going on with us?”

“Well, didn’t you say so? I was going to say, too. I love you. I mean it. I love you.”