Thrust (19 page)

"Yeah, man, there was a fire."

"Who set it?
 
Jilliane
?
 
The
pyro
chick with the burn scars?
 
Tell me it was her."

"Don't you know yet?
 
Can't you remember even that much?"

"Oh hell.
 
If you say it was me I'm going to—"

"No, Gray."
 
Shake let his sorrow bleed into his eyes, the drag so strong that Chase almost went with it.
 
He swallowed and opened his mouth and nothing came out.
 
Shake tapped his teeth together, trying to find his tempo again.
 
He couldn't, and just let his words fall.
 
"It was me.
 
I set the fire."

"You?"

"Yeah, I did it to save your life. It's how we met.
 
Don't you know that?"
 
He looked deep into Chase's face, trying to shuck everything else that always pulled them away from reality.
 
"It was my fourth day there.
 
They were torturing you in that big tub.
 
I saw them and thought they were killing you.
 
It was the only way I knew how to try to stop it.
 
I took a pack of matches off that
Jilliane
pyro
chick, lit my pad up, and threw it in a laundry basket.
 
I don't know how it got so out of control."

Chase put himself to it and remembered the dark face of a man called Ron Wilson, who would later become
Babawanda
Mugwanda
and thereafter Shake Sunshine Jr., peering in through the small, clouded plastic window at the top of the door.
 
Ron usually sat in the center of the ward at a table large enough for only one man, staring down at his writing pad.
 
You'd think they wouldn't give pens and sharpened pencils to the consumers, thinking they might go crazy and start stabbing the nurses, or jab themselves in the carotid.
 
But there he was, scribbling away every day, sort of bouncing in his seat to the rhythm of his own verse, whispering without muttering, grooving to his own meaningful narratives, the verse of his survival.

"You saved me," Chase said.
 
"I didn't remember."

"You can't hold on to it."

"You act like you don't believe me when I tell you about Barrack."

"I always believe you.
 
You can't remember that I believe you."

"Well," Chase said.
 
"Before I forget again, let me say thanks."

"You don't have to say thanks, man.
 
You're my best friend.
 
I knew it even back then.
 
Right at the beginning."

Chase craned his neck and looked around the curtains, studying the room.

Jasper did all right, grabbing the audience and holding onto them with all his versions and imprints.
 
Chase thought he could hear himself in there, and Shake and Isaac as well.
 
When the folks clapped he could see Dawn in her seat really tearing it up, waving her arms.
 
Maybe you really could find love and somehow be redeemed in the end.

He saw
Jez
and Joe Singleton standing at the back of the place.
 

She had her hair up in the pony tail again, bare legs easing down and down from the hem of her slinky black dress.
 

The heat of Chase's rage started up, that engine turning over, slowly at first, then rattling on.
  

Joe Singleton had the same pony tail, took out his gold lighter, flicked it, and brought the flame up to his cigarette.

There was no Nurse
Jez
.
 

Joe Singleton stared at Chase, blinking in the smoke-filled darkness, and nodded once.
 

"How's Jasper doing on the stage, man?" Shake asked.

"Good.
 
And look there, you've got to check out this beautiful girl.
 
She was crying before because you didn't give your whole reading."

"What?"

"She was really heaving.
 
I thought she might faint."

Shake leaned over and his eyes followed to where Chase was pointing and settled on the dude with the
poofy
shirt.
 
Shake instantly became rooted and inert, his face wiped clean of expression.

Chase stepped out into the front of the Palace, headed for the emergency exit sign to the side, knowing the knife would follow.

J
oe Singleton, who'd cut himself open out of boredom, who'd stolen his own kid and made an abbreviated run to nowhere, who'd taken out his own old lady, shadowed Chase down the street.

There weren't that many alleys anymore, not like you see in movies from the 40s.
 
Nowadays almost every inch, even two foot wide gaps between buildings, was prime real estate.
 
It took Chase about six blocks before he found an alley in the Village barely wide enough for them to have their face to face.

He ducked in past a street lamp that gave off a ring of illumination.
 
It covered about half the ground of the alley which dead-ended at a gated doorway and a dumpster.

The sounds behind him weren't so much footsteps as they were skitters, like a small animal creeping up.
 

Okay, so here it comes.
 

Plant yourself, get ready.

He spun, unsure of exactly what he'd find.

His father with his shattered head blooming red and bubbling his last suicidal thoughts.
 
Or
Jilliane
, hairless and thin as kindling, her blisters spitting and exploding against the bricks.
 
Doreena
hopping like a hobbled frog, with her panties around her knees, dragging herself in circles. Maybe Ellis, his Windsor knot loosened by his own small brand of madness, eyes spinning from doing nothing for the past five years except mainlining tragedy.
 
Granddad with his hacked wrists and some of his wheelchair-bound palsied buddies, going, "Fred, don't be mad, Freddy…"
 
Jez
, waiting to throw herself at him, proving that she was real, and had loved him, and still did.
 

We need whatever we need to get us through the long night.
 
You just never knew who might be the next to lose their
frickin
' mind.

It's Joe Singleton, the maniac.
 

The cheek that had been smashed in the accident was webbed with pits and scars.
 
Those insane eyes of fury like pyres.
 
He wasn't grinning, not at all, except looking at him now, anybody could see that he really was.

You understand the wrath of a patient man, and that's what Singleton was telling you that night five years back.
 
Saying how he would bide his time for this moment, living for the kill.
   

"Why are you here, Joe?" Chase asked.

Singleton's voice was much higher than Chase expected.
 
Almost prissy.
 
"You killed my little girl."

"I think that was you."

"You're not getting out of it, no matter how you try."

"It was your actions that caused her death."

Not even talking to Chase, hardly even noticing him.
 
"I've been waiting for this."

"I know you have.
 
You also murdered your wife."

"That bitch, she deserved it."

Whiny, on the verge of a snivel.

This was the big finale?
 

Chase stared at Joe Singleton thinking about everything he wasn't seeing.
 
All the elements in the man's makeup that had brought the guy down this road.
 
Surely he had his fine points.
 
His moments of tenderness and caring, when he wept in his sleep or cried out from heartaches no one else could quite understand.
 
There was more to him, but in the story of Chase's life, Joe Singleton was just the killer con.
 
But not very smart.

Joe Singleton, coming at him with the four-inch blade held low against his leg.

First move.

A wide arcing, sweeping slash that might look cool on the screen but didn't do anything.
 
Vaudeville.
 
First act enticement, pure theater.
 
The funny guy playing off the straight man.
 
It was only part of the build-up, something Singleton did to get himself psyched.
 
Chase didn't even have to slip to one side or the other.
 
The blade eased by and got no closer than six inches.
 
On Chase's cell block, if Singleton had tried that with a
shiv
they would've driven it into his ear.

Next move.

A jab that was supposed to perforate a lung.
 
Joe's good at this, he's had lots of practice.
 
So far as Chase could tell it wasn't meant to murder, just maim and scare, chop somebody down some.
 
This is what Joe had done to his wife a couple of times over the years.
 
Punctured a lung so he could listen to her sucking air and gasping like a dying grouper as she crawled across the carpet.
 
Chase ducked and dodged the way his grandfather had taught him years ago, and lifted and drove his fist forward in a vicious uppercut that should've take Singleton's head off.
 

But his swing was too short and his knuckles barely brushed Singleton's chin, glancing off something slippery.
 

Jesus Christ, Singleton, the
fuckin
' maniac, used a moisturizer.
 

With Aloe.

Third move.

The
kiddie
stuff was done now, this was going to be a bad one.
 
Chase tried to stay calm but was too anxious.
 
A cold wire pressed against his spine, from the back of his neck to his asshole.
 
His nuts shriveled.
 
It was a weird feeling, wanting to stay alive.
 
Chase hadn't realized he cared so much.

Singleton stabbed forward, faking to his left even as he settled himself on the balls of his feet.
 
Chase knew what was happening but had already tried to counter, hedging to the right.
 

Ah, silly.
 

You're going to die because you were dumb, and for no other reason.
 

Chase couldn't shift fast enough as mad Joe Singleton, the animal, the punk, eagerly anticipating the proper moment, sprang and slid the blade into Chase's belly.

Letting out a throat-ripping shriek, Chase realized now, god damn, no matter how cool they play it in the books, this shit hurts like crazy.

He'd never seen blood from that deep inside a human before.
 
It's the blood that went around inside the organs you couldn't even name.
 
It dripped thickly off the first two inches of blade.
  

Two inches.
 
That might be small for a dick, but if you held your fingers that far apart, and imagined steel going in that much, you opened your eyes wide and went whoa mama.

The wet warmth flooded over his belt buckle and splattered the concrete.
 
He almost fell over but Stacy appeared at his side, reached out, held and steadied him.

"Enough of this," Singleton hissed.
 
"Time to take you out."

"Who's next?" Chase asked.

"I've got a whole list."

Amazing that someone could be locked up for five years, thinking about this showdown, and not come up with anything better to say than that.

But really, you couldn't take him too much to task, since all Chase came out with was, "Blow it out your ass."
 

Stacy tightened her grip on his hand.
 
He felt that.
 
Chase chewed his tongue, still not quite ready to be dead yet.
 
Whatever happened, he'd go out swinging.
 
He clenched his hands into fists and stood his ground.
 
You found your pride where you could.
 

Lifting the knife a little, Joe Singleton let out a snicker and angled the blade up, ready for the single thrust under Chase's ribs and into his heart.
 

And now—

Huh.
 

Well.
 

Behind Singleton, moving quickly, was
Arlo
Barrack.

Sometimes it doesn't take much effort on your part to read exactly how it will unfold.

"Miss me, Killer?" Barrack asked.