The Bleeding Season (7 page)

The pizza place downstairs didn’t open for another couple hours, so none of the smells that normally invaded the apartment (no matter what we did to try and cover them) had seeped up through the floor yet.  I sat there groggily for a moment, noticed it was still overcast and cloudy but the rain had stopped and the apartment was quiet.  I looked back over my shoulder, the bed was empty, Toni’s spot a clump of wrinkled sheets.

Apparently, I’d slept through the night without incident, but I still felt worn out, as if perhaps I’d spent the night doing something else.  Like lugging cement blocks.  Or digging ditches.

The phone rang just as I made my way out of the bathroom, and Toni arrived holding the cordless a moment later.  “It’s Nino,” she said, rolling her eyes.

I took the handset and sat on the bed.  “Nino, what’s up?”

“Al,” my supervisor’s harried voice answered, “listen, man, I got a scheduling problem, need some help.”

In all the years I’d worked for Battalia Security, Nino Battalia, the owner’s brother and my direct supervisor, never called me at home for any other reason.  “OK.”  I sighed, glanced at Toni, who stood at the foot of the bed, hands on hips and head cocked.  “I’m listening.”

“Craig called in sick, he won’t be in tonight.”

“The new kid?”

“Yeah, you know how these newbies can be.  Says he’s sick—got a flu or some shit—I don’t give a rat’s ass what he got, you see what I’m saying?  But the thing is, he’s covering Bantam Motors.  I can’t piss them off, Al, that’s a nice account.”

I recognized the name as a car dealership in the south end of New Bedford, only blocks from where Bernard had killed himself.  “First of all, that’s not the greatest neighborhood,” I said.  “Second, that’s a nightshift gig.”

“Yes to both, but—”

“Come on, Nino.  Jesus, I don’t do nights anymore, and I don’t do shit details.  I’m senior guy.  Besides, I just woke up.  I would’ve stayed up and slept this afternoon if I knew you needed me tonight.  I spend Sundays with my wife, dump it on somebody else.”

I could hear a big glass of Alka-Seltzer fizzing; Nino drank it like most people drank Pepsi.  “Al, you think I called you first?  I hit everybody on the roster, man, can’t nobody fill the shift.  You’re the only one I ever been able to count on.  You know that.  Just cover this shift for me and you can take Monday off.  I’ll toss a couple bucks extra in your check this week too, OK?”

“How much?”

“How’s twenty sound?”

“Like it’s not enough.  Fifty, and I want cash.”

“Forty.”

“Fine,” I said.  “I’ll do it.  Is this armed?”

“Nope, leave the piece home.  Strictly stick on this one.”

“Good.  You on tonight?”

“Yeah I’m working dispatch.  I won’t be around on supervisor rounds though, so youse can all relax.”  Nino gave a hearty laugh, which was interrupted by gulping sounds as he downed the Alka-Seltzer.  “You need directions?”

“Nah, I know where it is.  Report time?”

“In at eleven, out by seven.”

“Am I sitting in my car all night or what?”

“Nope, inside.  They got a nice desk for you and everything.”

Toni crouched before me and rubbed my thigh.  With the heat in my groin rising, I said,  “OK.  I’ll radio in tonight when I get settled.”

Her hand slipped beneath my underwear, and her fingers curled around my scrotum.

Nino was still babbling, thanking me when I hung up and tossed the phone aside.  Toni already had my briefs down around my ankles.  I watched her pull them off entirely, and spread my legs wider as my erection grew, reaching for her.  One hand moved from the back of my calf to the inside of my thigh, the other gripped and slid me into her mouth.  I moaned and held her head as I pumped slowly, timing my subtle thrusts with her motion.

I stroked her hair and leaned forward, draping myself over her and pumping harder as she increased the pressure and tightened her lips.  “Jesus,” I gasped, but the words caught in my throat as she released me, still kneeling and just visible over the edge of the bed.

She laughed in a way that struck me as nearly dutiful, then flopped next to me on the bed, the mattress bouncing.  My heart racing, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her over on top of me, but she pushed away and stood up.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.  “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, straightening her pajamas.

I reached for my underwear and pulled them on over my dying erection.  “This is fucking ridiculous,
what
is the problem?”

Toni shook her head.  “It’s never enough for you, is it.”

“Never enough?  Are you serious?  When was the last time we made love?”

“That
was
 your dick in my mouth just now, wasn’t it?”

We stood staring at each other for what seemed a long time.  “You know what I mean.”

She arched an eyebrow, folded her arms across her chest.  “Do I?”

“Well if you don’t then we really
are
 in a world of shit, Toni.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to pretend to have some clue as to what the hell you’re talking about?”

“We don’t make love anymore,” I said, glaring at her now.  “You take care of me, service me the way a hooker services a john, for Christ’s sake.  No passion, nothing real or heartfelt, just efficient, emotionless and robotic sexual acts.”

“A
hooker
—that’s a nice thing to say to me.”  Her lips trembled.  “Asshole.”

“Look, I’m sorry.” I reached out and put my hands around her waist.  She felt so small, so easily breakable. “It’s just—I don’t understand what’s happening to us.”

“Neither do I.”

“It’s like everything’s broken, all confused and doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

The heat that had risen within me was gone, leaving behind a void, a feeling of nothingness.  “You act like it doesn’t matter,” I said.

She looked away and mumbled something, but the phone rang, interrupting us again.  

I snatched it from the bed angrily.  “What?”

“Hey man, it’s me, Rick.”

“Let me call you back.”  

“We need to talk.  There’s some weird shit going on.”

“Fucking
now
 what?”

“We were wrong about Bernard,” he said, his tone nervous.  “He did leave a note.”

I felt my heart drop, but it was only my knees as I sank back down onto the bed.  “What are you talking about?”

“He left a suicide note, just not in the usual way.”  Rick cleared his throat.  “I was going through my mail from yesterday and—I know this sounds fucked up but—there was something from Bernard.  He left a note, man.  He just didn’t leave it down in that basement.  He sent it to me.”

CHAPTER 5

The sky had turned an odd shade of gray.

I parked next to an empty basketball court surrounded by chain link fence and hurried across the street, hesitating once I’d reached the dead front lawn of the apartment building.  I noticed Donald’s car and Rick’s Jeep parked nearby.  Although this was the poorest neighborhood in Potter’s Cove, it was normally a vibrant part of town, but the area was quiet, the streets still.  Two old men talking at the base of the front steps shuffled their feet against the raw wind and ignored me as I moved onto the landing and into the relative warmth of the foyer.

A door to my right opened with a loud squeak to reveal an emaciated black woman with a sallow face.  I visited Rick often, and despite the high turnover rate, I recognized many of the tenants on sight. But this woman was definitely new; I hadn’t seen her before.  Dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, her sunken eyes blinked at me slowly, like a cat.  “You here about the plumbing?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“You here about the plumbing?” a high-pitched voice echoed.

I glanced down to see a small boy peeking at me from behind the woman’s frail legs.  I offered a restrained smile and winked at the boy, who immediately hid behind his mother.  The woman sighed, stepped back into her apartment and closed the door.

A battered staircase eventually led to Rick’s third-floor apartment.  I hesitated to listen for a moment then knocked lightly.

Rick answered quickly, his expression tense as he stepped away from the door and ushered me in.  The apartment itself was small, decorated modestly and bore the clutter of a man used to living alone.  Beyond the main den were a kitchen and a hallway that led to the bedroom.  Since his former girlfriend moved out, the apartment had taken on an impersonal, somewhat transient feel.  The only items that revealed Rick’s specific presence was one wall covered with framed photographs and newspaper articles chronicling his high school athletic career, and a table beneath showcasing several trophies and faded ribbons.  It was a shrine that had always seemed to me nothing more than a constant unpleasant reminder of distant glory and opportunities lost.  Most teenagers with the athletic prowess Rick had possessed went on to college with full scholarships.  Some eventually made it to the professional ranks.  Instead, Rick went to prison after nearly beating a man to death during a brawl over a parking space at a local restaurant.  Even though several witnesses testified that the man had swung first, many also testified that Rick had continued to beat the man long after he had clearly lost consciousness.  The brutality of his retaliation, along with the massive medical injuries the man sustained, gave the judge ample reason to make an example of Rick.  And that’s exactly what he did, sentencing him to twelve months in Walpole State Prison, a maximum-security institution that housed some of the worst criminals in Massachusetts.  He served the full term, and that year behind bars effectively destroyed any chance at college or a career as a professional athlete.  It also changed him forever.  Rick had always possessed a volatile, violent temper, but the time served made him harsher, and in many ways potentially even more violent.  Memories of visiting him in that horrible place blinked through my mind.  “Aren’t you usually asleep this time of day?” I asked casually.

“Yup.”  He tried to appear unconcerned.  “You want something to drink?  I got Cokes in the fridge.”

“I’m good.  What’s this shit about a note?”

A toilet flushed and a moment later Donald appeared from the hallway looking horribly hung-over.  He gave a less than enthusiastic wave and lowered himself onto a worn couch.  “The plot thickens.”

I wondered if he remembered I’d been at his cottage the day before.  “I’m listening.”

Rick sat on the arm of the couch, grabbed a padded manila envelope from the cushion and tossed it to me.  “That came in the mail yesterday.  I didn’t check my mail until this morning.”

I caught the package; it was nearly weightless.  Rick’s name and address had been written across the front in black marker, and a label advertising a private mailbox and mailing service served as the return address.  “
Mailbox Universe
?  That’s here in town.  If Bernard’s been dead almost a week why did you just get this yesterday?”

“Listen to the tape.”

“Bernard must have left them instructions not to mail the package until a specific date,” Donald said.  “You can pay them to do that.”

I nodded.  “But why wait so long?”  When no one answered I reached inside the torn opening and pulled out an unmarked cassette tape.  I felt nothing else, so I peered inside the envelope.  It was empty.  “What’s this?”

“His note,” Rick said.

“He recorded it?”

“He must’ve used that Walkman we found in his duffel,” Rick said.  “I remember seeing a
Record
 button on it.”

I moved to a chair, sat down and put the envelope aside.  “You already listened to it?”

“Rick has, I haven’t.” Donald sighed.  “I didn’t want to have to do this twice.”

“There was nothing else in the envelope and the cassette’s unmarked,” Rick told me.  “I didn’t know what the hell it was until I listened to it.”

I stared at the cassette, entranced and repelled at once.

“When I heard Bernard’s voice I almost shit myself,” he said, drawing my attention to his slowly flushing face.  “When I heard what he had to say, I think I actually did.”

Rick took the tape from my hand, walked it over to a stereo in the corner and dropped it into the cassette player.  Multicolored lights on the equalizer came to life, rising then falling quickly, accompanied by a loud and steady hiss.  The lights continued to dance as the hiss became breathing, and finally, the sound of Bernard’s voice.

“If you’re listening to this…If you’re listening to this then it means I really did it.”

He sounded different than I’d remembered, not just because on tape everyone’s natural tone is somewhat altered, but because he sounded hollow, like he was speaking to us from the bottom of a stone well.  I sat forward, hands together.

“Rick, I sent this to you first because it seemed like the right thing to do.  I know you’ll listen to it, and I know you’ll make the right decision and share this with Donald and Alan.  No offense, guys, but if I sent the tape to either of you I’m not sure you’d tell Rick or even each other.  But I know you’ll do the right thing, Rick, you’re the chief.  You’re Warlord.”

My eyes met Donald’s, then Rick’s.  The Warlord was the leader, the head
Sultan
 who ran our pseudo gang.  When Tommy was killed Rick had become warlord—a term we’d used somewhat jokingly, and one I hadn’t thought about in years, but it summoned the past in vivid terms, and I was relatively certain that had been Bernard’s intention.  Although toward the end he’d become a shell of what he’d once been, Bernard spent most of his adult life in sales, and like any good salesperson he’d been skilled at speaking to people and eliciting from them the responses he needed or wanted, a flair for manipulation, in terms less kind.  

“I had the people at the mailbox place hold off and mail the package on a specific date,” he continued, his voice eerie and laced with a faint echo.  “I figured by the time you got this and listened to it you’d know I was…gone.  I’m sure you all have questions and confusion and you’re probably pissed with me for doing it, but…believe me when I tell you, guys, it was the best thing.  Rick, you probably think I’m a pussy—a coward, right?  That’s what you’re saying, anyway, but deep down, you know that’s not true.  And Donald, you’re just sad and bitter about it, while Alan, I’ll bet you’re all withdrawn and introspective, like always.  We’ve known each other too long, fellas, too long.