Malice Times Read online

  The man mumbled something.

  “I can’t understand you.” My father took the gag down from his mouth. “What were you saying?”

  “You can take the business. You can have it all. Please. I have children. I want to see my children.”

  “What would I need with a failing business?”

  “The property has to be worth something.”

  “I already own the property. What I don’t have is the capital I gave you to start this business. That is what I need back with all the interest that you agreed to pay me within a year. It has now been a little over a year and I am nowhere near to getting my initial investment back, let alone the interest.”

  The helpless man started to cry. His head heaved up and down with each sob. My father put the gag back over his mouth. The man started to shake in the chair trying to wriggle free.

  "I’m not going to get my money, am I?”

  The man shook his head in despair.

  "Perhaps if you had spent a little less time gambling your money away at the roulette wheel and more time handing that money over to me, you wouldn’t be sitting here. Would you?”

  The man nodded in agreement. My father then took out a gun. The man just grunted and tried to cry out.

  "For Christ's sake," my father said. "If you couldn't live like a man, at least have the decency to die like one. Of all the people I have loaned money to over the years, you are the least likely person for me to be lenient with. You had the audacity to come into my gambling establishment and gamble my money away. I mean how fucking stupid are you? Seriously? I would really like to know. Because that seems like a special kind of stupid to me."

  My father tried to put a silencer on the end of the gun. The man hopped up and down. The chair banged noiselessly on the plastic. The silencer fell out of my dad's hand. "Damn it." He reached down and picked the silencer up. The man rocked back in forth. The chair started to tumble. My dad placed his foot on the rod that connected the two back legs of the chair to keep the man from falling over. Sweat and tears intermingled together on the man's face. My dad handed Brad the gun and the silencer. Brad deftly attached the silencer to the gun.

  Brad turned his head away from the scene. The man saw me peering down from the top of the stairway. I wanted to withdraw. He had a look of pleading in his eyes. Pleading me to come down. Pleading to stop my father. If I walked down the steps, no way does he kill him. Just come down the steps the eyes pleaded to me. But stopping this poor man from dying never even occurred to me. All I wanted to do was leave. To just not be there. To just not see it. Because somehow this was the worst day of my life, not his.

  "You want to say something?" my father asked the man sincerely.

  The man nodded.

  "Does it have anything to do with the money you owe me?"

  The man shook his head. My father pointed the gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. A puddle of urine formed on the plastic underneath the chair. The man looked up at my father, tears streaming down his cheeks. My father looked down at the man with a stern look on his face.

  “No more gambling,” my father said.

  The man was shaking. He tried to nod, but his sobbing was shaking his whole body.

  “I am giving you three months to make your debt right. The next time, the gun will be loaded and I won’t be the one pulling the trigger. Are we clear?”

  Brad reached down and removed the gag and untied the emotionally spent man. He couldn’t stand. He sat there sobbing in his hands. Brad opened a door that led to the side yard and motioned the man to leave. The man couldn’t stand. He sat there sobbing and staring off in the distance.

  “You said you wanted to see your children,” my father said. “So, go see them. And every time you look at them, think to yourself, I have to get Mr. Marchello his money, so I can see them again tomorrow, so I can see them grow up, so I can see them graduate high school, go to college, get married, meet my grandchildren. That’s worth living for.”

  As the man finally got his legs under him and started to stumble towards the open doors, not sure why he was still alive, he looked back over his shoulder. He might not have taken a bullet to his head, but those eyes were dead. My father had broken something inside that man, something that would be impossible to fix. The man walked out through the doors and into the night.

  “When does he arrive?” Brad was looking down at the puddle of urine on the plastic.

  “He should be in at around 2:00 in the morning,” my father said. “I’ll need you to send someone to pick him up at the docks.”

  “Is it really necessary for him to stay at the house?” Brad asked.

  “I am only doing what I was asked to do,” my father said. “Get someone to clean up this mess. Good idea about the plastic.”

  “They almost always piss themselves when we do this,” Brad said.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but that brief glimpse of conversation would change my life forever. I quietly retreated back up the steps, retrieved some blankets and some beer and took Rae down to the lake. We drank some beer and made love on the beach under a moonless night. Every time with Rae was like the very first time.

  After we were done, we laid there for a while staring up at the cloudless night sky, stars glistening in the heavens. She cuddled, her firm body pressed tightly against my wiry frame.

  “Do you ever think about leaving Malice Grove and never coming back?” I asked.

  “Never coming back? No, not really. I can’t wait to go to college though. It’ll be fun being able to sneak off and meet with you.”

  “Yeah, it will be. Almost like when I used to sneak into your house when we were kids. I miss those days.”

  “What’s wrong, Joey?” Suddenly she was sitting. Her small breasts hovering just over my face.

  “Nothing. I’m not sure I like this whole growing up thing.”

  “I know what you mean. It is scary thinking about being away from home.”

  “Yeah, being away from home. And about understanding who you are and where you come from.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You’re talking funny. You’re starting to scare me.”

  “I’m fine, honey. It’ll just be nice to get out of this place and go somewhere where people are decent and nice and no one knows who we are and we can just be. You know what I mean?”

  “I guess so, Joey,” she said and laid back down on me.

  ♦♦♦

  The next morning when I awoke, a man by the name of Don Webb was sitting at the kitchen table eating a healthy breakfast. He was a tall, slender man with dark hair. Deep blue eyes were exaggerated through thick glasses. He had a scar that reached from his right nostril to his right ear lobe. It was pink and twisting like a dead worm. I looked at my father, puzzled. We didn’t get many visitors early in the morning and certainly not ones who were treated to breakfast. He was eating voraciously.

  “This is Mr. Webb,” my father said. “He will be staying with us for a while.”

  I didn’t say anything, just watched the man devour his food like a hyena.

  “Don,” my father said. The man didn’t move from his food. “Don. Don. Don. Don.”

  The man finally looked up from his food. “Oh, yeah, that’s me.”

  “Don, this is my son, Joe.” Webb looked at me with a glint in his eyes. I felt like I was being inventoried.

  “The one that graduated,” Webb said. “Congrats to you. Can’t say I ever did the same, but it never held me back none.”

  “Thank you,” I said and sat down to eat some breakfast.

  “Fine looking boy, Marchello,” Webb said. “You should be proud.”

  Days went on, life continued as usual. I spent most of my days and evenings with Rae talking about the future and how we were going to work out our schedules when we were at different colleges twenty miles apart. We were both going to live on campus instead of getting an apartment together, because we thought that living t
ogether would make it really hard to want to go to class.

  For the next few weeks as I was off doing my own thing, Webb never left the house. He just walked around the house like a caged animal. We would run into each other periodically, usually at breakfast when other people were present. It was particularly uncomfortable to run into him alone. I didn’t communicate with him, although he tried to engage me in conversation. Something about him made me uneasy. My dad made me uneasy, too, but it was different. Webb was like a ball of violence spun tight ready to burst.

  Independence Day came and my father’s annual bash was going to be as big as usual. By that time, I knew that Webb was in hiding. The man never left the house. That morning I asked my dad, “So what did he do?”

  “What do you mean?” my father asked.

  “Don, although, that’s not his real name, is it?” I asked.

  My father started to laugh. “You’re smart, like your old man.”

  “It didn’t take great thought, dad. He never leaves the house and he often forgets his own name.”

  “Yeah, he’s not the brightest bulb. Maybe he’ll have it down by the time he is able to leave.”

  “How long is he going to be here?” I asked.

  “A while longer, I’m afraid. He did something very, very bad. Something that takes a long time to forget.”

  “He’s got a new name. Can’t he just move on? He gives me the creeps.”

  “To be honest, he gives me the creeps, too, but I have some business associates who are very interested in him, so I really don’t have much choice.”

  “You always have a choice,” I said.

  “If only that were true, it would be a wonderful world to live in. Besides, he’s going to be getting out of the house more. Do some work for me just to keep from getting bored.”

  My father’s Fourth of July celebration may have been the best one ever. I could have been a little bit biased by the fact that Rae and I spent the night having sex. At the end of the night, I went back to my room. When I walked in the door, I hesitated. Light poured in from the hallway, my shadow cast across my bedroom. Webb looked up at me with burning eyes.

  “I saw you with your little girlfriend,” he said. I didn’t move from the doorway. “I’ve been watching you for quite some time. You’re a fine looking boy, Joe. Does that little girl of yours know how fine you are? I wonder. I wonder if that wannabe of a father of yours truly appreciates you either. He’s very good with the giving orders, isn’t he? Don’t you get sick of it? I know I’ve about had taking orders from a lousy little crumb like him. Big bastard fish in a little pond. How do any of you stand living here? But you can’t stand it here, can you? No, you can’t. I can tell. You have brains. Yes, you do. How would you like to get out of this podunk town? Why don’t you come over here and have a seat?”

  I started to back up, but he was up off the bed like a shot, his hand wrapped around my wrist, yanking me towards him. He wrapped his arms around me pinning my arms against my body. I could hear him smelling me. His deep blue eyes magnified by those coke bottle glasses he wore. He licked my face. I could feel his hands running down my body. I kneed him in the groin and heard a muffled grunt. He loosened his grip a little bit, but I still couldn’t move my arms. It was like being in a vice. I threw my forehead as hard as I could into his face. I heard a crunch and he yelped. I could feel blood flowing down my face. He let go of me and backed up.

  “I’ll do you for that,” he said. Blood covered his face. He came at me again, but I eluded him. I grabbed the heavy lamp that sat next to my bed and swung out at him as he came at me. The lamp exploded the side of his scarred face. Blood splattered against the wall.

  I ran out of the room looking for my father. I found him in the kitchen with Brad and told them what happened. Brad got up from the table and started for the door.

  “Hold it,” my father said.

  “What?” Brad asked, anger etched across his face, fists balled like two giant coconuts.

  “We have to be very careful with how we deal with this.”

  “I’ll be very careful.”

  “What are you going to do, Brad? Kill him? What is that going to accomplish? He has a lot of value to Regan. You will not lay a single finger on him except to take him to the basement. That is where he will remain until I have an opportunity to discuss the matter with Regan.”

  “What?” I asked. “The man tried to rape me and you’re sending him to his room like he talked back to you at the fucking dinner table.”

  “Watch your language,” my father said.

  “He tried to fucking rape me,” I said.

  “We don’t know that’s what he had in mind,” my father said. Brad punched the frame of the door. “Brad, go up to the room, extract Mr. Webb and take him to the basement. I will have a word with Mr. Webb in a few moments.”

  I watched as Brad led Webb through the kitchen and down to the basement. My father went to his study. He was talking on the phone when I ran up to my room. I couldn’t sleep. The clock on my bedside table read 2:45 in the morning when my father eventually came. He had finished his conversation with Webb.

  “So Mr. Webb says that he came into your room by accident. He had been drinking and had lost his way. He says that you attacked him as soon as he walked into the room.”

  “And you believe him?” I asked. “He tried to rape me.”

  “Maybe you just thought that. You said yourself that he gives you the creeps. He walks into your room late at night. You think he has sinister motives and you attack him. It is understandable.”

  “He didn’t walk into my room. I walked in and he was here,” I said. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  My father got up to leave. At the door, he turned and said, “That is the last I want to hear of this.”

  After my father left, I sat there for a bit stewing. Then, I started packing a few necessities. My mother tumbled into the room as I was zipping up a duffel bag.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. The odor of whiskey hung on her every syllable. Her speech slurred, eyes glassy. She sat down on the bed.

  “Did you hear what happened?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then do me a favor, don’t tell that person who claims to be my father that I am gone.”

  “Okay.” Her body swayed under the weight of my words.

  “I’m leaving. I can’t take it anymore. I never want to see any of you ever again.” Those were the last words I spoke to my mother for ten years.

  9

  The storm came with sunset. Lightning and thunder battled in the night sky. I pulled my Jeep through the gate and up the driveway to the house. The rain fell like missiles as I walked to the front door and knocked impatiently. The downspout at that corner of the house was clogged and a small waterfall formed over the roof and down to the driveway below. Water pooled there, creating a stream that flowed rapidly down the driveway. I knocked again. The door swung open a few seconds later.

  "Buona sera. Come, before you catch cold," Marie said and rushed me in.

  "Am I late?" I asked quietly as I was removing my coat.

  "No. They wait for you in living room." She hung my coat up in the closet to the left and led me to the living room.

  The moment I stepped in the room my father didn't waste a moment. "Now that my son has arrived we can begin."

  The room showed no signs of the party except for a dozen or so flowers that stood up against the walls in various parts of the room. My father stood in the middle holding his usual glass of bourbon in his right hand. My mother, who didn't look very well at all, sat on one end of the huge couch against the wall. The couch reached from the middle of one wall all the way to a corner, where a connecting piece continued along the other wall. On the other end of the couch sat the blonde woman that had been with Dempsey at the funeral. Her brown roots were gone. She wore a very tight black dress that left little to the imagination. Tom Watkins sat in an old wicker rocking chair away from e
veryone else. He eyed me unsteadily, like a rat would eye up a cat.

  A wiry man in glasses, with a VHS tape and a folder in each of his hands stood next to a huge television set that could have occupied mission control at NASA. He spoke in a high-pitched voice. "My name is Allen Bromley. I was Michael's attorney and I drew up his will. He made a video presentation, so you will not have to listen to me read through the arduous legal jargon that you no doubt would like to avoid. So I will pop this video in and you can hear from Michael."

  Bromley popped in the video. It started up almost immediately. The screen of the television was blue at first and then my brother came on the set. He stared out of the television from his study at his apartment at 223 Westbrook Lane. The bookshelves behind him were mostly empty. He wore a blue suit with a pink and gray striped tie. He moved. It was the first time I had seen my brother in ten years. He was a short, wiry man with blue eyes and blond hair. He looked so much like my mother, who began to sob gently. The blonde woman stared stiffly at the set. She glanced over at my mother and rolled her eyes. My father walked over and sat beside my mother. He put his arm around her and she cried into his side. I felt like I had been suddenly awakened from a dream, like I had never actually left Malice Grove, like I was still eighteen-years-old and nothing had changed.

  Watkins looked at the picture attentively, obviously amazed at the technological developments of the last twenty years. To bring the dead back to life must have seemed astonishing to him. He would draw blood if he bit any harder on his bottom lip.

  Then my brother spoke, which caused my mother to remove her head from my father's chest and stare at him. "This is my last will and testament."

  Watkins moved to the edge of his seat and the chair rocked forward. The gorgeous blonde sat back in the couch impatiently, her legs crossed, her right foot swinging up and down vigorously. No one said a word. I don't think anyone even breathed.

  “I'll make this short and sweet. I realize that is difficult to believe for most of you. I have a tidy little sum of money in my bank account and the paper, The Malice Times." That caught my father's attention. He sat up straight and leaned forward. His eyes had become very narrow, furrowing his brow. The blonde sat forward and clenched her knees with her hands. Watkins continued to lean forward in his chair.