The Good Kind of Bad (24 page)

Joe was the virus left lurking, the sleeper cell impervious to antibiotics, designed to resist and feed and multiply. I’d been so stupid. It wasn’t over. Atlantic City? He hadn’t left Chicago. He’d probably been stalking me the entire two weeks, creeping and lurking behind each shadow.

‘Hoof it, pal, and while you still have the chance to,’ Evan warned, jumping forward and swooping down an arm, protecting me behind his bulk.

Joe’s widening eyes were almost hypnotic, like saucers of black bile. Transfixed, and with my thoughts tail spinning, I stepped back, lost my footing and stumbled in my heels, falling back onto a white Audi TT and sounding the shrieking alarm.

‘Hand her over,’ Joe yelled over the siren, now only two car lengths away.

Evan reached down, and was helping me up from the floor before he turned and barked at Joe, ‘Leave, pal, and before I bounce your head on the floor.’

Joe’s laugh was toxic. ‘Tough guy, right? Do you see me quivering, Mr Fifty Grand Suit? Whose wife is she? Yours, or mine?’ Joe stood firm and reached a hand behind his back. From his waistband he retrieved what looked like a handgun, a
real
handgun. It waited idly in his grasp, swinging like a pendulum. ‘I’ll say it again. Maybe this will make you listen. Give her to me,’ he ordered, raising the gun as the alarm silenced, the ticking of the hazard lights turning all our faces to ashen gold.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from Joe’s hand, hyperventilating at the sight of the gun, and, moreover, that Joe held it. ‘Evan?’ I murmured through gritted teeth, both of us back on our feet. ‘We have to call the police.’

‘Po-lice? Come on,’ Joe interrupted. ‘Don’t get melodramatic on me here. It’s only a gun.’ Slowly Joe paced forward, until the gap between us was negligible. Then he was beside me, taking my wrist in his hand, in a grasp that’d bruised me before.

I moved back, but he already had me, almost snapping my wrist as he pulled me from Evan’s arms. He was helpless to fight back, Joe’s gun gluing Evan to the bonnet of the Audi.

‘That’s it. Stay. Good boy.’

With Joe gripping my elbow as he dragged me towards the Chevelle, my cloudy head created an unwanted compliance, though it was probably for the best. After witnessing his primitive instincts kick into overdrive, angering Joe was the last thing I wanted to do.

‘Come on, it’s late. We should be getting you home.’

My heels stuttered across the garage floor before Joe opened the Chevelle door and stuffed me in through the passenger side. Fighting would’ve been useless, and I didn’t try, mostly due to the gun. After Joe locked the door and moved to the driver’s side, I banged on the window, gazing at Evan, still stuck on the car bonnet, and still with the gun on him. It was only after Joe screeched away and I glanced frantically behind that I saw Evan sprint for his car. Whatever Joe had planned for me, at least I wouldn’t be alone in trying to stop him.

Joe glued his foot to the accelerator, the speedometer topping eighty on an empty North Lake Shore Drive.

‘God damn it, let me out!’ I screamed as we tore over the asphalt, my taut emotions releasing like a popped balloon. I wrenched at the door handle, reached for the wheel, grasped for the gear stick, anything to steer us off the highway to hell.

‘Are you crazy?’ he cried, pushing me off. ‘Get your hands off the damn wheel.’

After exiting onto East Roosevelt by the aquarium and turning onto South Wabash, a flash of headlights illuminated the Chevelle’s interior as we narrowly avoided an oncoming SUV. I shook my head, refusing to believe any of it was happening. A few minutes earlier and the future had looked, well, promising. Now I wasn’t sure I had one.

Then Joe reached for my hand, his eyes off the road. ‘Where’s your damn wedding ring? Did our sacred vows mean
nothing
to you? You knelt before God and promised yourself to me, and I sure as hell don’t remember the part where you could take that off and start sleeping around.’

‘Sacred vows? Joe, I want a divorce!’

‘A divorce, huh?’ Joe sneered, squashing my fingers in his iron grip before pushing me against the door. ‘Forget it, bitch.’

My hand shook. I was sure he’d broken something.

‘And now you’re going with this guy? Mr Fancy Ass? How long ’til you drag him up the aisle and then divorce
him
?’ His eyes still hadn’t returned to the road, not that it would’ve made much difference if they did.

‘We’re just friends,’ I sneered.

‘No kidding. Real friendly it looked, too. You used to dress like that for me, you used to look at me like there was no one else in the room. Now you’re flaunting your flesh for some other dick. Do you know what that makes me, huh? Angry. Very angry.’

We continued veering over the road before the flashing lights of a car behind dazzled the interior. Glancing back, I saw a pewter Lincoln MKS swerving dangerously close to Joe’s bumper. It had to be Evan.

The city was a sparkly blur, each corner taken at forty plus as Evan matched Joe move for move.

‘Who does this dick think he is? Get the hell out of my ass!’ Joe grunted at the mirror.

‘Maybe he thinks he’s a cop?’ Judging by Joe’s alarmed expression, I’d secured his attention.

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

‘He’s a detective, with the Chicago Police. After this little game’s over, you’re going nowhere but jail. They’ve been looking for you, they’ve been . . .’ I bit my tongue, thinking better of my taunts. He
did
still have the gun. He was still the same man who beat my face in.

The Chevelle’s engine roared as we headed into a gangway, Evan still in hot pursuit as we raced between the buildings, all sense of feeling departing right around when I collapsed.

‘You want me to let you go, is that it?’ Joe asked.

‘Yes. Let me out, let me go!’ I screamed with my fingers tugging at the handle.

As the vehicle slowed, Joe reached across, unlocked the door and pushed me out.

I felt myself close to the wheels before I bounced onto the floor, the fall setting my body alight with pain as the growl of Joe’s engine faded. Alone and aching, I allowed myself a whimper of pain as I looked down. My dress was split and soiled, my arm was cut and my head pounded, though an aching body was the sum of my injuries, a discarded mattress breaking my fall.

Soon another car approached and the sound of footsteps drew near while I lay still, staring at the blackened sky, searching for the stars.

‘Hey, hey! You okay? Oh my god, don’t be dead.’

‘I’m fine, you idiot.’

It was Evan, crouching to help me up as I managed to hook an arm around his neck.

‘You look far from fine. It’s all right, I’ve got you. I’ve got you,’ he soothed, while helping me to his car. ‘So that’s Joe, huh?’

‘This dress cost two thousand dollars!’ I yelled into the sky, to Joe, who was probably halfway to the county line already.

‘You’re right. The guy
is
a psycho. He threw you out of a car!’ Reaching the Lincoln, Evan opened the passenger door and slid me in before rushing to his side and taking a seat behind the wheel. ‘Where does it hurt? Any broken bones? You need the ER, and now.’

From the security of Evan’s car, the panic surged through me like an electric current. ‘No. I can’t go to any hospital. We have to find Joe. Do whatever you have to, kill him. I don’t care!’ I spat the words with venom. After all Joe’s party tricks, inane banter and bleeding knuckles, this was the last straw. Pulling down the visor to examine my reflection, it wasn’t my dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards look I noticed, but something else. It had slipped away, my naivety and youth. I no longer looked like the me from a few months before.

‘I know where he is,’ Evan assured after a time, his words bereft of feeling. ‘He doesn’t seem like the most complex man in the world. He likes taunting you. He’s always dying to view his handy work, to watch your reaction. I bet he torched your apartment to get you over there. I think he’s waiting for you. He’s not boarding a train, he’s not escaping; he’s gone back to your apartment, back where
you
can find him.’

‘Why?’

‘You heard what he said, back in the parking garage? He wanted to take you home.’

I laughed. Evan looked at me like I’d lost it, but it was funny. Joe wanted to play happy families. Truthfully, there was nothing left to do but laugh.

Turning over the engine and showering the world in light, Evan’s screeching tyres secreted a trail of rubber on the ground as in an instant, we were out of the alley and heading for Joe.

Evan drove like the devil was on his heels. Sure enough, we soon stood outside the apartment block on South Evergreen, Joe’s car outside in need of a trip to the scrap yard. As the Fourth of July fireworks exploded overhead I glanced up at the apartment window, thin strips of light escaping through the blinds. Evan was right. He was home.

We climbed the dank stairs with haste, Evan refusing to let my injuries slow our progress, before we stormed through the ajar door and into the apartment like the opening titles of a bad cop show. Glancing around, returning to the old apartment was more unsettling than I’d imagined, the kitchen where he’d drunk to excess, the bedroom where I’d been incarcerated and the lounge, our haven, where Joe had done that most terrible of things. It felt wrong. I didn’t care about revenge. The place held too many secrets. I wanted to leave, leave and never look back.

In the kitchen, I grabbed for Evan’s arm. ‘Please, let’s go. This is a bad idea. We should call the police. Let them deal with him.’

‘The police won’t do shit, and you know it.’

‘And what are
you
going to do that’s any better?’

‘You’ll see. Come on, keep walking. Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.’

Evan pulled me reluctantly forward, through the kitchen and toward the lounge, though I stopped at the table. The day Joe had run Charlie down my cheek, he’d cleared the kitchen table in one fell swoop, most of the breakfast ending up against the wall. By rights the
colazione
should have been rotting and mouldy, the mephitic remnants festering for two weeks at least.

The table was upright. He’d cleaned up. He
had
been there.

Then came the ruckus from the lounge, the sharp stumbling of feet. Entering stage right a humungous oaf plodded into the kitchen, his steps piercing my eardrums like a jet engine or pneumatic drill. Each one was an elevation in the danger stakes, though I had no more nerves left to fray. Then Joe smiled, that same crescent moon grin that pricked my skin like a hundred tiny knives.

Observing Joe in his natural habitat, I could see now how drunk he was. It must’ve been five hours since he’d last passed smashed and not collected two hundred dollars.

‘You threw her out of the car, you dick,’ Evan shot. Evidently, Joe didn’t scare him, even if he did have a gun.

‘Hey, that
zoccola
wanted out, man. It was nothing to do with me.’

Evan took a step towards Joe. ‘Show her a little respect, all right? Keep talking and we’ll see what happens.’

‘What, like I get thrown in the back of a paddy wagon? Yeah, she told me about
you
. I hate pigs, she tell you that? They blew my kid brother’s head off, and for what? Because he was shooting at them first? The people around here? They want you dead; all the cops too trigger happy for their own good.’

‘Shut your mouth,’ Evan ordered. ‘Another hundred-yard hero we got here.’

He paced towards Joe but I grabbed for his arm, shaking my head. ‘Evan, don’t do this. He has a gun.’

‘He has a gun? Joe has a gun? Oh yeah, here it is.’ Again retrieving it from his waistband, Joe aimed it between us, sloppily and mercilessly, before placing it on the dining table. ‘We don’t need bullets, that’s too easy. You got a knife, cop? Like Charlie here?’ There it came, out of his boot, the knife he’d threatened to stick in every hole. ‘My father never agreed with killing po-lice, never wanted that type of heat, but I never did care what he thought.’

‘Don’t say another word, or . . .’ Evan breathed.

‘Or what, you’ll shoot me?
Vaffanculo.
’ Joe planted a kiss on his forefingers before jamming them to his temple, the knife quivering in his other hand. ‘That’s what pigs do ‒ murder men, shoot them dead, bang bang, a bullet in my forehead.’

As Joe raised the knife, Evan reached to the table. He grabbed the gun, pointed it at Joe, and fired one shot. I heard the B of the bang, but all else was dark, my eyes clamping shut at the deafening ring. It was only when I dared to open them that I saw. That was when I saw him.

Joe lay with his back to the kitchen tiles, a pool of blood collecting underneath him.

I screamed. I screamed again. He was struggling for breath, choking for it, squirming and fighting before me. Then, reaching out a bloodied hand, he beckoned me down.

Instinctively I glanced at Evan, but his stare was solemn and alone, the gun now dropped and its ammunition spent. Again Joe summoned me with those long, quivering fingers.

I walked the floor like it was a frozen lake before the thaw, Joe’s gasps becoming all the more fragmented. We’d stood at the altar, smiling like little kids, in delirious ecstasy at our wonderful future. We’d kissed on the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier with the city twinkling before us. However much I hated him, however much my rage had grown, there would always be those moments. Somewhere, far behind us, he would always be that man. Whatever sickening things he’d done in life,
I
was still a good person.