Nightlife (17 page)

It seemed oddly poetic, disastrously so, that he would be paying for Justin’s new lease on life with his own. The final bill, coming due. He wouldn’t betray Jus, couldn’t, no matter what they did to him.

He had always known that he and Justin would wind up living in the same place. Had entertained this future dream that, once the nightlife and sowing of wild oats had lost their appeal, the two of them would settle down into pleasant, hopelessly conventional suburbia. Wives, monogamy, homes, mortgages, the whole bit. And each other, friends through the decades. Drinking beer in a backyard while watching their collective brood of children playing with one another. Growing old and gray together, hopefully not bald.

So, Justin, man, looks like you’ll have to find somebody else for that scene. But before you do, I hope you figure out what’s happened here—and put these fuckers in the ground.

Tony wrestled his one free arm into cockeyed rigidity, held it over the tank. Lupo reached out with the straight razor and flicked a pair of quick cuts before he even realized what was happening. One on the heel of his thumb, another midway up on his inner forearm. Cold slices, already weeping red by the time the pain set in.

Erik watched the lines of blood fill, then trickle down his hand, his arm. Watched the drops plink to the water. Saw a blur of silvery-gray, heard a splash as something briefly broke water. This wasn’t going as he’d thought, and somehow that seemed worse.

Tony clicked on the lights over this last giant aquarium.

And Erik couldn’t help but scream when he got his first real look at just what lived there. Pride be damned. He wept. There was no shame.

“Last chance,” Tony said. “Then it’s fish food.”

Erik spat into Tony’s face and received a brutal backhand for it. He desperately remembered telling Justin about his reasons for quitting the
Tribune,
enumerating the atrocities he had seen the aftermath of. Including the corpse whose arm had been chewed by piranhas. Never dreaming the killer had been under his nose all along.

He wrestled, he struggled mightily, but they had him out-powered. The temptation was there, the clutching at straws. Give them what they wanted. But it would do no good. He could spew out Justin’s name, employment history, and Social Security number, and it would not change a thing.

Cause I’m fucked no matter what.

They plunged in his arm up to the elbow, and the blood awoke the hunger of the tank. A dozen ridged mouths, razor sharp, attacked. Set about their horribly efficient task of stripping flesh to bone.

Erik shrieked. Long and loud. So long as he could scream, he could keep secrets.

Fucked
—a strange word. It could either denote, crudely so, that most intimate of unions, or the direst of circumstances. The f-word.

And as he watched the water boil white foam, then red, a couple more f-words came to mind. . . .

Feeding frenzy.

Justin had never known a day that had so quickly swung from one polar extreme to the other. Not even last fall, when the world in St. Louis had come crashing down about his shoulders. And that was a picnic in the country by comparison.

Saturday afternoon, slumped silent and motionless into a chair in some featureless little room, each hand cupping the opposite elbow. The stale reek of old cigarettes clung to the walls, and he was a guest of the Tampa Police Department. Alone for the moment, but knowing they’d be back. Knowing that he was likely being watched by eyes on the other side of a two-way mirror.

When had it started, when had the flip-flop occurred? He couldn’t think straight. Was afraid that if he could, then the hurt and the grief would punch through the numb cocoon surrounding him. The deadening of sensation that set upon him as soon as he’d been sledgehammered in the heart and balls with the news that Erik was dead.

The turnaround—when? He remembered the blues clubs. April cruising him to St. Pete to show him her parents’ house. He remembered the sunrise breakfast on the beach. Going back to April’s, punchy from lack of sleep, howling with laughter at cartoons. She had run him back home around noon, and yes, that was when the happiest morning he’d known in months had begun turning inside out to reveal the nightmare. Yes. The police cars, patrol cruisers and unmarked, were parked before and beside the building. He remembered kissing April good-bye, knowing the cars couldn’t have anything to do with him. Watching her leave in her Fiero. Feeling a chilly racing of his heart that had nothing to do with exertion as he climbed the stairs and didn’t yet see where the cops had been called to. First floor, second floor, clear.
Third floor
...

No,
he had thought,
not here.

He had stood in the doorway, walking in on the middle of what appeared to be a very thorough search. Stammered out a few answers to questions. Identity, reason for being here. Listening to a cop tell another that his voice sounded like the one from the message on the answering machine.

Shortly thereafter—still in the dark as to everything—he’d been the recipient of a chauffeur-driven trip to the cop shop. And thus had Saturday taken its irrevocable U-turn. Decline and fall of a picture-perfect day.

He didn’t smoke, never had. Figured if he did, by now he would have chained his way through at least three packs.

The door opened, and in walked a pair with whom he had already gotten better acquainted than he wanted. Homicide detectives Harris and Espinoza. Harris looked like a high school jock trying desperately to hold on to a physique from twenty years ago and losing, with receding black hair and close-set eyes. Espinoza was small, dark, black shoulder-length hair. Easy on the eyes.
Any
woman would be, with Harris in the room. Justin spent most of the time looking in her direction.

“Your story checks out with Miss Kingston,” Espinoza quietly told him. Voice neutral. He wondered how many rooms away April was, how long they’d grilled her to see if there were any cracks in his account.

“But let’s go over everything else again anyway, okay, sport?” Harris swung a chair around, threw his leg over it to straddle it backward.

“We’ve already been over it,” Justin murmured, then shook his head wearily. Raised his voice. “Tony Mendoza.
Tony Mendoza.
What, I have to spell this guy’s name out to you? Go haul him in.”

It was like dealing with the deaf. Go over it again and again. He’d told them the unadulterated truth, beginning with the night at Apocalips. The only part he had omitted was seeing Trent’s dance-floor metamorphosis. Mendoza, Lupo, the whole bathroom episode? He had no compulsion to keep them a secret. Trent he covered by saying the guy had flipped out, violent PCP style. And now Mendoza was nosing around, asking about Justin, his whereabouts.

Implication and inference scored big. Logical minds could fill in the blanks regarding Mendoza and Erik.

But when he heard himself speak, only then did he realize how thin it truly sounded. Judges and other bastions of justice were rarely swayed by mere inference. Annoyingly, they demanded evidence.

“Look, Justin.” Espinoza, this time, gentler of voice, demeanor. “We appreciate your candor. You’re being very upfront with us. But there’s not a hell of a lot we can do because a guy’s asking around about where you live.”

“Maybe he just likes your pretty face,” Harris cracked. Espinoza ignored that. “Mendoza’s a slime, no arguments there. Nobody’d like anything more than to see him fall down a hole and watch the sides cave in. But guys like him—there’s a revolving door they go through down here. They can afford the lawyers that scream the loudest. We bring him in on no more than what you’ve said, all we’ll accomplish is tying up maybe an hour of his time.”

Justin felt like tearing his hair out. “What about the Apocalips thing? You got me, I’m a witness to that, I saw him supply Trent.”

Espinoza stepped up to the table, flipped through a file that lay closed. “We’ve got some problems there too. Um . . . you’re not the only one that gave us Trent Pollard’s name.” She peered at a report of some kind, then looked up. “The M.E. ran a gas chromotography on him, and there
were
traces of a hallucinogen in his system. But forensics on the bodies at the club don’t lie. Those were animal wounds.”

Best not to mention that the two weren’t necessarily incompatible theories. Watch all credibility die a quick death. “So—so you can’t do anything about Mendoza?
At all?
”

“We can talk to him.”

“Talk to him,” Justin echoed dully. “And you know he’ll pull out a fat cushy alibi for last night.”

No answer. Justin sat, wanting to die, melt away into nothing. No memory of this life, nor recollections of the pains of the flesh. And the feeling doubled once Harris started in on him again.

“We did some checking up on you, Justin. You’re not exactly unknown to the St. Louis narc squad, are you?” Harris leered in with a satisfied smirk that dared him to be dumb enough to try knocking it off. “Well? Are you?”

He stiffened. “We had a working relationship.”

Harris leaned back, barked a humorless laugh. “Working relationship. I love it.” Leaned forward. “So tell me. What kind of working relationships were you starting up down here?”

Justin frowned. Wishing he could be anyplace else besides this chair, this room. “I don’t follow you.”

“No? Then why don’t I lay it out for you the way I see it.” Harris leaned back again. Like watching a rocking horse. “You fuck up big time in St. Louis. You’re out of a job, your wife decides she’d rather ball somebody else besides some penny-ante dope dealer. But you still get lucky, don’t you. You cut a deal and walk away clean as the day you were born. But you know nobody’s gonna trust you again in that town, so you figure, hey, why not waltz down to Florida, plenty of opportunities for a dumb young man.”

Justin flashed a look at Espinoza. She was watching detachedly, leaning against a wall.
Jump back in here anytime, why don’t you.
he willed her.
Save me from this guy.

“So you’re down here, and I don’t know how, but you make some quick connections and start to set yourself up in business, and somehow the deal goes sour. And now your good-buddypal Erik is lying in the morgue. Pissed off the wrong people or something.” Harris crossed his arms. “So. How’d I do? Sound familiar?”

Justin couldn’t believe this. Could
not.
Except for the one who’d done that to Erik in the first place, Harris was just about the cruelest human being on earth.

“You figured that out all by yourself?” Justin asked.

“I have that knack.”

“You’re not even close enough to be funny.”

Harris rolled his eyes.

“Can I have a cigarette?” Justin asked.

Espinoza reached into her purse and withdrew a pack of Benson & Hedges. Gave him one. Justin tapped the filter on the tabletop a couple of times, then left it sitting in front of him. Untouched.

“Um . . . and a glass of water, too, please?”

She exchanged a look with Harris, and it seemed to translate
Sure, why not.
Harris looked disgusted for the half minute she was gone. She brought in a plastic tumbler. Not glass, so he couldn’t smash it and cut their throats and escape. So much for Plan A. He set it beside the cigarette. Without drinking.

“You need a light for that?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” He shook his head.

“You know what kind of shape your friend was in?” Harris said. “Some boaters found him floating just south of the Gandy Bridge this morning. A patrol boat gets him pulled out, and the guy’s nothing but
bone
from the elbow down on his left arm. Now, not only had he been chewed up before he got dumped, looks like, but all these other little nibblers out there in the Bay had gotten to him too.
And
it looks like he’d been worked over pretty good about the head and shoulders too. Well, yech, I could go on and on—”

Justin surged to his feet. “Listen, that’s my best friend you’re talking about,
and I don’t want to
hear
all this!”
Harris was up on his feet too, shouting. Face-to-face. And in a moment Espinoza was stepping forward, a hand on each’s shoulder, a referee breaking up a clinch. Justin was shaking, wanted to punch the guy so badly he could taste it.