This Wicked World (8 page)

Spiller and T.K. walk up the cracked concrete path to the sagging porch. An orange cat sunning itself there rolls to its feet, glares at the men, then disappears into the bushes. Spiller feels the first step give slightly under his weight, the wood spongy, almost eaten through by termites.

“See that?” T.K. points the toe of his shoe at the small black pellets scattered among the Thai takeout menus that litter the porch. “Rat shit.”

Spiller stops in his tracks, the muscles in his legs freezing up. When he was a baby, a rat climbed into his crib and bit him in the face. His mom says it never happened, that he must have dreamed it, but Spiller can still feel the animal’s teeth ripping into his cheek and smell its garbage-dump breath.

One step. Two. He forces himself to walk to the front door, a scream rattling against the back of his teeth.

V
IRGIL DRAWS HARD
on the bong, the water inside bubbling as he fills his lungs with smoke. He feels a cough coming on but holds back, because this is the good shit, the kush, and he doesn’t want to waste a bit of it.

Eton is sitting in his ornate wood and velvet vampire chair, telling one of his punk rock stories. He looks like a vampire too: tall and thin with dyed black hair hanging to his shoulders, one blue eye and one green, and skin so pale Virgil can see his veins. He’s wearing leather pants and a sleeveless New York Dolls T-shirt. Real old school.

“We played Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio, where the Pistols played when they toured in seventy-seven,” Eton says. “These fucking cowboys, a whole gang of drunk shit-kickers, were waiting for us in the parking lot afterward, wanted to beat our asses. Black Ron, our drummer — he was a real big boy — pulled a machete out of his road case and chased them off, screaming like some kind of funky… funky… rhino on crack. Hey, did you ever see
Jacob’s Ladder
? Now that’s a trippy fucking flick.”

Eton Dogfood. That’s his punk name. Virgil doesn’t know his real one. He played bass in The Despised back in the eighties, a hard-core band that made it onto a few compilations but never put out their own CD. Now he deals all kinds of dope, and DJs at clubs and private parties.

Eton inherited this crazy old house from his grandma. In fact, her room upstairs is exactly as it was on the day she died.

He took Virgil up to see it once, all the dusty old lady stuff still on the dresser, her robe laid out on the bed, a closet full of shoes. Fucking freaky shit.

The whole place is freaky. The windows that haven’t been boarded over are covered with thick velvet drapes that keep the rooms dark all day, but not so dark that you can’t make out the peeling wallpaper and the water stains on the ceiling. There are candles everywhere, and paintings in heavy frames: men in armor, angels, hunting scenes. And the smell. Virgil once explored an abandoned gold mine with his dad, and the house smells exactly like it, like bat piss and dirt and rotting wood.

Virgil exhales a cloud of pungent smoke, passes the bong to Eton, and settles back on the couch, which matches Eton’s chair.

Virgil’s older sister, Olivia, met Eton at a club in Hollywood where he was spinning records when she first moved out from Tampa years ago. They became good friends, and she ended up moving into this house for a while, cooking, doing dishes, and making dope deliveries to earn her keep. “Olivia is like a little sister to me,” Eton told Virgil. “A little sister with a really great ass.”

When Virgil rolled into town a month ago and needed a place to crash, Olivia called Eton from wherever the hell she’s living now, the desert or wherever, and arranged for him to stay at the house. At first Virgil was creeped out by the whole scene — the cobwebs, the rustling in the walls at night. He also thought that Eton might be gay and worried that he’d try to get with him. But everything turned out cool.

The best part was how generous Eton was with his stash, even fronting Virgil some stuff so he could earn a little money. Virgil started hitting the clubs and moving product, and things had been going pretty good. He’d built up a little bank and was able to get high whenever he wanted. Until last night.

“Where were you again when you got ripped off?” Eton asks for the third time.

Virgil rubs his shaved head and feels his scalp move under his fingers. That kush is some sick smoke fo sho, he thinks.

“Some yuppie place on Hollywood Boulevard. Had all these clocks everywhere. The Tick Tock or some shit.”

“And you’re sure they were cops?”

“Alls I know is two big motherfuckers came up with badges, saying they were police and that they wanted to talk. They didn’t look like no police to me, though, so I knocked one of them on his ass and was about out the door when the other one stuck a gun in my ear. They dragged me out to the alley behind the restaurant and jacked me for all the dope I had and all my money too.” The money part’s the biggest lie — he’s still got over a hundred bucks — but what the fuck.

“I slid you three hundred dollars’ worth of shit,” Eton says.

“I know, bro, and I feel really bad about that,” Virgil says. “But I’m gonna repay you, I swear. If I gotta go out and rob a bank, I swear to God I will. ’Cause you trusted me, and that’s a serious fucking thing.”

Eton stares at Virgil with those weird different-colored eyes of his, and Virgil wonders if he’s finally going to go off on him for losing the drugs, but the guy just smiles and says, “Man, I gotta get out of this town.” He reaches for the two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi on the coffee table and refills his big green plastic glass. “Don’t ever try heroin, okay?” he says after taking a sip. “Promise me that.”

“I promise,” Virgil says, once again not knowing where the hell dude is coming from or how he got there.

There’s a knock at the front door.

Eton leans forward in his chair and cocks his head. “Am I expecting customers?” he asks himself. “What day is today?”

“Friday,” Virgil says.

Eton stands and walks to the door, glass in hand. “Yeah,” he calls out after pressing his ear to the thick wood.

“Open the fucking door. Delivery from Taggert.”

Taggert. Virgil has heard that name before. Eton turns to him with a scared look on his face. “Dude,” he whispers, “there’s a…” but is interrupted by more knocking.

“Fuck,” Eton says. He twists the deadbolt, and whoever is on the other side pushes the door open, knocking him off balance, and spilling his Pepsi. Virgil watches from the couch as two men step inside and slam the door shut. The whole house shakes. There’s a big black one with Chinese eyes and a little white one with a ponytail and a bandage on his neck. Both are carrying guns.

“Are you the owner?” the black guy asks Eton.

“This is my house,” Eton replies.

“Remember the money you borrowed from Taggert?”

Eton tugs on the neck of his T-shirt. “A friend set something up when I needed a little help, yeah,” he says.

“When’d you pay him back?”

“I’ve been…”

“You didn’t pay him back,” the white guy yells. “That’s the answer to that one.”

Eton sidles away from the men, says, “You know what, you’re really freaking me out.”

“Hold it right there,” the black guy says, extending his arm and pointing his gun at Eton’s head.

Eton puts his hands up. “Relax, bro,” he says as he lowers himself into his chair.

Virgil bounces one knee and chews on a knuckle. He wants to tell these guys he doesn’t know anything about anything and split before any shit goes down, but he’s too afraid to speak up.

There’s a crash in the kitchen, a dirty pot settling in the sink, and the white guy flinches, snaps his gun toward the sound. He’s breathing funny and sweating like he just ran a mile.

“What’s that?” he asks sharply. “Who’s back there?”

“There’s nobody else,” Eton says.

“Probably a fucking rat, huh?”

“I don’t know, man. Maybe. Now, look…”

“You look,” the black guy says, taking a sudden step into the living room. “You’ve got five minutes to pack a bag. Taggert’s tired of your excuses. He’s foreclosing on this place.”

“You too, twink,” the white guy says to Virgil. “Hit the road.”

“Wait,” Eton says, his voice strangled into a pathetic whine. “Let me call my friend Olivia. You know her, right? She’ll straighten this out.”

Oh, yeah. Now Virgil remembers. Taggert is Olivia’s boyfriend out there in the desert. She mentioned him on the phone once. Virgil is so nervous, though, he can’t decide if this is good or bad for him.

“Nope. No calls, no bullshit,” the black guy says. “Everything’s been said and done.”

The white guy darts over to Eton and jabs him in the chest with the barrel of his gun. “Pack! Your! Fucking! Bags!” he yells.

There’s another noise, the old house popping in the heat like it sometimes does. The white guy backs off and looks up at the ceiling with bulging eyes, like he’s afraid something might drop on him.

“This isn’t happening like this,” Eton says. “Not to my nana’s house.” He stands, a chrome revolver clutched in his fist.

“Gun!” the black guy shouts.

He and the white guy open fire, the muzzle flashes shockingly bright in the dark room; the noise painful, each explosion like a hammer blow to Virgil’s chest. Eton flops back into the chair with part of his skull blown away. Blood gushes black from half a dozen holes in his body. His mouth opens once, twice, gulping, desperate, and then his head slumps forward, and he’s dead, dead, dead.

V
IRGIL RAISES HIS HANDS OVER HIS HEAD AND CLAMPS HIS
eyes shut. “Stop!” he yells. “I’m Olivia’s brother. My sister is Taggert’s girlfriend. Don’t shoot me, sirs. Please don’t shoot me.”

“Shut the fuck up,” the black guy says.

“Yes, sir.”

Virgil opens his eyes and realizes he’s not breathing, hasn’t been since the shooting started. Sucking in too much air, he coughs. Through a gunsmoke haze he sees the two men standing over Eton’s body, their pistols still trained on him, as if he might spring back to life and begin squeezing off rounds at any moment.

“What a stupid fucking play,” the white guy says.

“Yeah, well, you’re calling Taggert about it, not me,” the black guy replies.

Virgil lowers his arms and notices that his Buccaneers jersey is spattered with a jelly of brain, bone, and hair. Vomit surges from his stomach into his mouth, and he barely manages to choke it back. “Sirs, I gotta get this shirt off or I’m gonna puke,” he says.

Both men turn to look at him.

“That’s fucking nasty,” the white guy says.

“Go on,” the black guy says.

Virgil lifts the jersey over his head and throws it across the room, sits there shivering in his wife beater. A gurgle rises from Eton’s corpse, blood draining, settling. Virgil stares at the floor to avoid looking at the body and to avoid making eye contact with the black guy, who’s now pointing his gun at him.

“What are you doing here?” the black guys asks.

“Dude was a friend of my sister, Olivia. Talk to her. She’ll tell you.”

“Don’t get a tone with me.”

“I’m not. I’m sorry.”

The white guy lights a cigarette, then pulls a phone out of his pocket, flips it open, and punches in a number.

“Boss? Spiller. Things went all to hell here. Your man drew on us as we were explaining the situation, and me and T.K. had to put him down. Also, there’s a witness, some kid who was staying here with the guy. He claims to be Olivia’s brother.”

Virgil leans forward on the couch and shouts, “I won’t say nothing, Mr. Taggert. I swear!”

“Shush,” T.K. hisses, raising a threatening finger.

“Right, her brother,” Spiller says. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Virgil. Virgil Cherry.”

“Virgil,” Spiller says into the phone. He listens for a long time, then says, “We can do that, sure. Whatever you think’s best. Right. Okay. Good-bye.”

Spiller slaps the phone shut, crams it into a pocket. He lifts his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, and Virgil glimpses a large tattoo on his stomach, a naked devil woman with her legs spread wide.

“Let me guess,” T.K. says. When he speaks again his voice is a hoarse growl: “ ‘You shit, you eat it.’ ”

Spiller shrugs and says, “He wants us to clean up as best we can and get out to the ranch pronto.”

“We should just burn the place down,” T.K. says in his own voice. “Do everybody a favor.”

He walks over to where Eton flung his gun when he was shot, on the floor halfway across the room. He picks up the revolver and sets it on a table, next to a bowl of dusty wax fruit. “You know the drill,” he says to Spiller. “Find something to wrap him in.”

He then turns to Virgil on the couch. “Duct tape,” he says. “Any around here?”

Virgil tears his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Maybe in back? In the laundry room?” he says.

“Show me.”

“You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”

“You’re not gonna give me a reason to, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay, then.”

T.K. slips his gun into the waistband of his jeans, and Virgil leads him through the filthy kitchen to the laundry room. They find a roll of silver duct tape in a cupboard there, plastic garbage bags, a saw. When they return to the living room, Spiller is waiting with the polka-dotted shower curtain from the bathroom.

“While we’re doing this, kid, you’re gonna collect our shell casings,” T.K. says. “How many’d you fire, Spiller?”

“Five.”

“And I popped three. Get to it.”

Virgil drops to his hands and knees and crawls over to where T.K. and Spiller were standing when Eton pulled the gun on them. He rests his cheek on the grimy hardwood floor and looks around. One casing. Two. Three. It’s going to be a bitch to find all of them, dark as it is in here.

T.K. takes Eton’s arms and Spiller his legs, and they lift him out of the chair and lay him on his back on the shower curtain. Working together, they roll up the corpse in the mildewed plastic. The duct tape screeches as Spiller unwinds it, and he curses under his breath as he wraps it around and around the grisly package.

T.K. is careful not to step in the blood puddled on the floor as he attacks the gore-soaked chair with the saw, breaking it down for easy disposal.