Hellhole (34 page)

“How'd it go?” Max demanded when Burg got into the car.

“Easy. Just knocked a few screws loose, and done.” He flung a piece of paper at them. “There's a copy of your contract, plus the termination, plus a receipt for two hundred and forty-six dollars in administrative fees.”

“Where's the other hundred and fifty-four?” Lore asked.

“In my pocket. Care to fish it out?”

Lore made a face. Max leaned forward. “But—there were no problems? She didn't fight you on it? Or suspect anything was strange?”

“If she did, my wiles and charm were sufficient enough to distract her.” Burg made a kissy face into the mirror.

“So she wasn't a yeti after all?” Lore asked.

“Nope. Stone-cold fox. See?” He handed them a business card with Flossie's photo.

A haggard old woman with a bowl haircut, giant sunglasses, and yellow teeth sneered back at them.

“Egh,” Lore said.

“So no problems at all?” Max asked again. He wanted to be very clear on this.

“Nope! Flossie was a consummate professional.”

“Huh,” said Max. “Guess she really is Eastville's best agent.”

Burg gave a thoughtful nod. “I'd recommend her.”

 

The drive up to the O'Connell house was celebratory.

“And I get a free Beamer!” Burg shouted, bouncing in his seat. “Jackpot!”

When they pulled up the driveway, Burg jumped out of the car and ran into the house like an excited puppy. Lore approached the door, but Max lingered in the yard. “You coming?” she asked.

Max hugged himself. “I don't want to go in there again. This house and I are never, ever, ever getting back together.”

Lore gave him an understanding look. She ducked into the house, then reemerged a moment later with Burg's ear pinched between her fingertips.

“Unhand me, woman!” Burg shouted.

“Not until you square up with Max,” she said, letting him go.

Burg dug around in his pocket and gave Max the remaining hundred and fifty-four dollars, even more crumpled than before. “Here!”

“That belongs to her,” Max said.

“No it doesn't,” Lore said. “I gave it to you. Use it for any other ‘administrative fees' that pop up. I don't want it.”

Max shoved the money into his pocket and turned back to Burg. “The house is one hundred percent officially yours. And I one hundred percent officially set you up on a date with my mom. Which means there's only one thing left to do.”

“Set up the sex dungeon?”

“Nope, that's all you. I'm referring to the terms of our deal.”

“Dude, I'm already on it! One healthy mom, coming right up.”

“No, not coming up! Now!”

“Shovel, healing is an
art.
It'll take me a day or so to get everything set up.”

“What about that ficus? You fixed that instantly!”

Burg waved his hand. “Oh, I just replaced that with a different ficus.”

Bewildered, Max looked at Lore. She shrugged.

Max jutted out his jaw. “You're not going to replace my mom with another
mom,
are you?”

“Of course not,” Burg said. “Besides, I work better under pressure. Don't worry, Shove, I promise I'll do it.”

Max stepped right up to Burg. “You're not messing around with me, are you?” he said, almost growling. “You
swear
you'll cure my mom?”

Burg smiled from horn to horn.

“I swear, Shove.”

With that, he tore off into the house. Max watched as the door swung slowly shut behind him, not quite lining up with its broken frame.

“Hey,” Lore said, poking him. “It's done. You did it.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Then loosen up. Celebrate a little.”

He pointed a finger into the air and whirled it around. “Woo-hoo.”

“Better, but not quite. Here.”

She grabbed his hands and began to swing him around like two little kids on a playground. And then, magically, Max did start to loosen up, as if the Charlie Brown–like cloud of unease that had settled over him for the past week slowly began to dissipate. As they swung, he began to feel lighter, free. Euphoric. He didn't even care how ridiculous they looked. Mom was going to get better, he was going to get his life back, and all of this unpleasantness would soon be a distant memory.

He stopped whooping long enough to perk his ears to a strange sound: Lore was full-on laughing.

“Don't look at me like that,” she said, giving him a shove after they stopped twirling.

“Careful, Lore. You're getting dangerously close to expressing a happy emotion.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I'm human. You got me.”

Her face was inches away from his, and for a brief, terrifying moment, Max thought she was going to kiss him.

But then the front door banged open. “Hey,” Burg said. “One more thing.”

Max deflated. He and Lore had been having A Special Moment, and now it was most assuredly fizzled.

“What now?” Max asked, irritated.

“All my friends are gone.”

“Your . . . friends?”

“Captain Morgan, Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels. Who's the guy in the commercial who fights a sea monster to get his whiskey back?”

“Huh?”

“No, that's not it—Jameson! There were a bunch in the liquor cabinet, but they seem to have mysteriously disappeared.”

Max sighed. “I poured out all the alcohol to make it look like O'Connell was drunk—”

“You POURED!” Burg cried. “OUT! The ALCOHOL?”

“Well, I'd get you some more, but I
have
to go to work today, even if it's only for a couple of hours. Or I'll get fired for real,” Max said. “You'll have to make do without them for a night.”

“MAKE! DO! WITHOUT?”

Max's hands were forming into claws again, but Lore stepped forward. “I'll take care of it,” she told him. “I've got a bunch of stolen booze left over from when Verm was around. I don't have to work today. I'll just swing home—in the BMW of course—and come back here to drop them off.”

Max frowned. “I don't want you coming back here alone.”

She reddened. “Well, as gallant of you as that is, Max, I can take care of myself. But thanks for your concern.”

“Well . . . okay,” Max said, biting his lip. “Just come by my house after work so I can make sure nothing cataclysmic happened to you.”

“Okay,” Lore said. “It's a date.”

Max and Burg watched her go, her ponytail swinging.

“You two banging yet?” Burg asked.

“Shut up.”

MAX'S TIRES SKIDDED ACROSS THE PAVEMENT.
He dropped his bike against the side of the Gas Bag and ran inside without bothering to lock it up.

Stavroula was behind the counter, arms crossed, wearing an expression reminiscent of those in paintings of Vikings.

“You're late,” she growled. “
Very
late.”

Max looked at his watch. He was supposed to have arrived two hours ago. “Sorry, Roula—”

“No excuses!” she shouted, which was a relief to Max. Somehow he didn't think
I'd have been here sooner, but I had a little murder to tidy up
was an acceptable explanation. She pointed a finger into his face. “I forgive you for cat burgle. I give you days off. And still, you late.” She shuffled back to her office, shaking her head. “You're on last straw! Five strikes and you out!”

Lack of baseball knowledge aside, Max took that cryptic last part to mean that he was very close to being unemployed. He put on his vest and took his place behind the counter, catching a glimpse of his old crossword puzzle stashed beneath the register. Something tugged inside him. What he'd give to have that be the most pressing issue of his day, how many puzzles he could solve in a shift.

Okay, technically he was still solving puzzles. They'd just increased in difficulty and proximity to corpses.

 

Max managed to duck into the Food Baron just before they closed. He made a big show of paying for each and every one of his items. He made a series of terrible jokes to the cashier so that she'd remember him. He even spoke to a manager about Paul in a last-ditch effort to get him his job back.

When he got home from work, he presented dinner to his mother as if it were as fancy as lobster topped with caviar stuffed with filet mignon.

“A supermarket rotisserie chicken complete with drippings!” she cried, clapping as he put the tray down.

“I didn't even bring utensils,” said Max. “So you can tear into it with your bare hands, just the way you like it.”

She'd already ripped off a drumstick. “Thanks, hon.”

“How was your day?”

“Oh, fine.” She sounded a little disappointed. “Lloyd said he'd call, but . . . whatever. Guess it was just a fun little fling.”

“Like I said: you're too good for John Cusack.”

She laughed and wiped a bit of gristle from her cheek. “What have you been up to today?”

Oh, just a little theft. Fraud. Some light murder.

“Same old, same old.”

“You sure? You look tired.” She squinted at him. “Is it that bully again? Still giving you a hard time?”

“A little.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But I think I may have finally gotten rid of him.”

She put the drumstick down, still concerned. “Seems like you're under so much stress lately, hon. School, work—and
I'm
certainly not helping matters.” She wrung a napkin through her hands. “You know, I've been thinking . . . maybe it's time to get a little help. You're getting older, you've started dating, you'll be going off to college next year—”

Max let out a soft laugh. “We can't afford college, Mom.”

“Well, you might get a scholarship. Either way, you're young and free and shouldn't have this huge responsibility bearing down on you all the time. It's not fair.”

“It's not about what's fair—”

She took his hand and leaned in. “Max. This isn't the life I want for you.”

He stared at her.

“I so appreciate what you've done for me,” she said, squeezing his hand. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it—I thank God every day that I have you, and I'll keep doing so all the way to my grave. You're the best thing my life has produced. And I love you too much to see you cooped up here all the time, me selfishly keeping you all to myself.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts.' Before I left the hospital yesterday, one of my colleagues offered to set me up with a visiting nurse. She'll feed me and dress me and get a good look at my sad, bony ass, and it'll be miserable and embarrassing, but I've been mulling it over, and I think it's what I want. Really.”

“But we can't afford a nurse.”

“She made a good offer. I think we can squeeze by.”

Max shrank. “I don't know what to say.”

“Don't say anything. Do you have any idea how happy I am that you turned out the way you did? I didn't know the first thing about how to raise a child, but I guess somewhere along the way I must have done something right.”

O'Connell's pale, blank face swam across Max's vision, the blood on the floor, so much blood . . .

Max shuddered, then stood to cover it up. “Thanks, Mom.”

Maybe it'll all be worth it,
he thought as he watched her crinkling eyes.
Maybe all these awful things I've done really will add up to something extraordinary.

“And hey,” he said with an easy smile, “you never know. You might get better. Might bounce back completely. Maybe we won't need that nurse after all.”

She gave him a placating smile. “Maybe, hon. You never know.”

Max heard a quiet, secret knock at the kitchen door. He kissed his mother good night and told his heart not to thump out of his chest when he opened it.

It thumped anyway. “Oh, good,” he said with a melodramatic sigh of relief that was, in truth, not that exaggerated at all. “You're alive.”

“So it seems,” said Lore.

He let her into the house. “Was he satisfied with the booze you brought?”

“For now. We'll see how long it lasts. Why are you grinning like that?”

He led her into the dining room. On the table, beside the DVD of
West Side Story
that had arrived in the mailbox that afternoon, sat a flat, round item covered with a dishtowel. “I got you something from the Food Baron.”

“Is it stolen?”

“Nope. Paid in full.”

He lifted the towel.

“Whoa!” Lore said, her eyes growing as round as the platter. “A cookie cake!”

“Yeah. As a thank-you.”

She squinted at the frosting. “Why does it have footballs on it? Why does it say ‘Go Team Go'?”

“Because it was the only one left that wasn't covered in flowers. And because the cake decorator had already gone home for the night, so I couldn't get anyone to write ‘For Lore, almighty Satan warrior.'”