Wasted (18 page)

“I can have you fucked off,” said Hartwell.

Thomas laughed. LeBlanc was terrified. She was listening on an extension. But Justin had dealt with real threats before, drug-family threats. Regina Hartwell was just talking out the side of her mouth. And he knew that. Still, Regina’s silly little threats irritated the hell out of him. “Just fuckin’ leave it alone.” he shouted. “Just fuckin’ leave it alone.”

“If you hurt Kim,” Hartwell screamed, “I’ll have you—”

“Don’t call if you’re going to argue and threaten me.” And Justin hung up.

Kim stayed on the line.

“I can have the sonofabitch thrown in prison,” Regina yelled to her.

The screaming voices raced through Kim LeBlanc’s head like a child lost at a traveling circus, carnival barkers bellowing in every ear. She felt caught, and she felt like screaming, too.

“I can have the bastard killed. You know I can do it. He knows I can do it.”

Caught. Trapped. Kim hung up, only to hear Justin yelling at her, too.

“I ain’t letting nobody send me to prison. Especially not some coke-snorting lesbian bitch. Ain’t nobody sending me to prison!”

“She’s just blowing hot air, Jay. You know, Regina. She’s always making stuff up, especially when she’s all jealous and protective.”

“I don’t care. Ain’t nobody sending me to prison. And I’m gonna make damn sure of that, with or without you. I’m gonna kill the fuckin’ cunt. Are you in this with me? ’Cause I can do it with or without you.”

Kim just wanted one more eight ball of coke. Just one more line. Just one more jump at freedom.

“Can you handle this?”

His words knocked Kim back into a moment of consciousness. She nervously glanced around her home. She sped through the options of living without Regina, of living without an apartment, without money.

In spite of herself, in spite of all the drugs she had snorted up her nose to clog up her mind, memory, and feelings, Kim heard her stepfather’s voice.
You’re only good for one thing, you use that one thing, and it gives you power, and you’d better use that power of yours, because you can’t take care of yourself. You can’t take care of yourself. You can’t take care of yourself. You—

“I can take care of you,” said Thomas. “I can set you up, just like Regina.”

“Yeah, I can handle it,” Kim said. Yeah, Regina could be a bitch, controlling, obsessive, possessive, but she’d never killed anybody. Had them thrown into jail, yeah. Threatened to beat them up, yeah. Threatened to have them killed, yeah. But ever actually killed anybody, no way. But Justin . . .

He tossed her her car keys.

Kim felt even shakier than usual.

“We’re going to Del Valle.”

“Why?” She picked up her Marlboros and walked out the door.

“I’ve gotta get some stuff from the house,” he said.

Kim didn’t like Del Valle. She didn’t like being with Justin’s family, out in the country, away from Austin.

 

 

Regina Hartwell frantically dialed Anita Morales’s number. She was crying, hysterical, and furious. It was around 8 p.m.

“Hello?”

Damn,
thought Regina. She wanted Anita, not Carla. “Anita there?”

Morales was standing outside as Carla Reid handed her the phone. She looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, the sun hadn’t yet gone down, and it looked like rain any minute.

“What you doing?” said Regina.

“Nothing.”

“Get away from Carla. I don’t want her to hear.” Regina waited. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“You better not tell anyone this, but I need somebody I can talk to. Who do you know in narcotics?”

“I know lots of people. Why?”

“I want to bust that fucking bastard, Justin. I’m sick and tired of him. And this time, he’s crossed the line. He’s demanding that Kim spend more time with him, and she’s already spending way too much time with the motherfucking sonofabitch.”

Morales had never heard Regina so angry. She sounded as though, if she had a gun and Thomas were standing right in front of her, on the spot, she’d blow him away. “You’ll have to talk to the investigators yourself,” said Anita.

“There’s an ounce to an ounce and a half of crystal meth coming in from Moreno, California. It’s supposed to arrive via UPS tomorrow at Justin’s house in Del Valle or my house. I’m not sure which.”

Morales walked inside her apartment and started jotting notes to herself.

“But at this point, I don’t think the bastard would dare send it to my house. I gotta talk to you about this in person. There are things you don’t know, and I don’t want to tell you over the phone.” Hartwell cried.

Anita Morales looked at her watch. She really needed to get off the phone, but she couldn’t let her friend down. “Who does Justin answer to?”

“A man named Rashon. Justin used to run with an East L.A. gang, and he’s killed before.”

“Do you want to come over here?”

“No, I’m too fucking mad to drive.”

“Do you want me to come over there?”

“No, I’ll be okay. Look, I’ll page you at work tomorrow. Now promise me you won’t say anything until I see you tomorrow.”

“I promise you.”

“No, say, ‘I promise, Regina.’”

“I promise, Regina.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

 

 

Justin Thomas walked up the stairs to his father’s bedroom and grabbed his old Army duffel bag. In the heat of the Texas June, he crammed it full with a black trench coat. Excited, he tossed in some face paint, too.

Kim thought he was playing GI Joe, but she didn’t think much beyond that. She couldn’t think on much of anything, not for very long. Cocaine. Crystal meth. Nicotine. And when she did think, she simply wondered where her next high would come from.

 

 

Around 9 p.m., darkness finally settled in, and Brad Wilson walked up to his Château apartment across from Regina Hartwell’s. He noticed that her door was open. “Hi, Regina,” he shouted.

“Hey,” she answered back and came out. “I’m sorry for all the noise we made this morning.”

He stuck his key into his door, then turned around to glance at Regina. “What are you talking about?”

“The noise, this morning,” she repeated.

“Oh, I wasn’t home. I didn’t hear anything.”

“Kim and I got into a huge fight. Then they left.”

“Who’s they?”

“Kim and her boyfriend.”

Wilson didn’t know Regina well. He’d only lived at the Château for about a month, but he thought Kim LeBlanc and Regina Hartwell were lovers. He was a bit confused by the reference to a boyfriend. He opened his door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Packing. We’re going to New Orleans tomorrow.” He stepped inside.

“Like to have a drink?”

“Sure.”

“What do you like to drink?”

Wilson really looked at Hartwell now. Her hazel eyes, painted pretty with perfect shadow and liner, seemed sad. He knew she’d been crying earlier. Ryan Watson, his roommate, had told him that. “I like wine,” he said.

“Good.” Regina smiled that big grin of hers. “I’ll go to the store and get a bottle.” She was so sweet and outgoing. “Then we can just sit and talk.”

 

 

Kim LeBlanc and Justin Thomas left Del Valle and drove the twenty miles back to Austin and Kim’s apartment. “One person can’t stab and dispose of a body by himself,” he told Kim. “You know what I’m saying, you need more than one person.” Thomas got on the phone and dialed some of his friends, his “posse,” he called them.

Under the late-night cover of charcoal sky and rain, LeBlanc drove through the heavy construction on Highway 71 and dropped Thomas off at Jim’s restaurant, a coffee shop in rustic Oak Hill.

It was almost like going home, like she’d told Regina. Kim could look across the highway and see World Gym. It was also getting closer to her Dripping Springs house with her mother and stepfather. And it was getting closer to her old high school of Lake Travis.

In fact, at Jim’s, Kim recognized two of Justin’s posse—Bryan Frnka and Michael Mihills. She’d gone to high school with them both. She wondered how Justin knew them, but she didn’t ask questions.

Thomas was somewhat nervous. “Regina’s threatened to turn me in to the cops because she thinks I’m a drug dealer.”

They all chuckled.

 

 

Regina Hartwell plopped herself down on Brad Wilson’s living room couch with a bottle of red wine for him and a big, plastic cup full of ice and some kind of liquid for herself. He realized that she’d gone to get the wine just for him. His cats crawled near her. He opened the wine.

“Kim’s boyfriend is named Justin,” said Regina.

She and Brad had never just sat and talked over drinks before.

“He lives in Del Valle, home of Mexicans and white trash.” Hartwell made a face. “He treats her like shit, white-trash shit. He’s a drug dealer. Sonofabitch. Asshole. Jerk.”

Her voice was controlled, but so much openness and so much emotion took Wilson aback. He watched her as she sipped from her big, plastic cup. This wasn’t her first drink of the evening, that was obvious. She was too outgoing, too upset.

“I’m going to cut them out of my life. I’m going to get a job and get my life straightened out. I hate that fucking asshole, Justin. I hate him. He’s fucking up Kim’s life. I know enough about him to have him thrown in prison.”

Wilson didn’t believe Hartwell. To him, Regina didn’t seem the type to have someone thrown in prison. But she didn’t seem the type to party all night either, and he’d heard that she did that. He thought about the Marilyn Monroe posters in her apartment.

“I’ve made the decision. I’m going to stop seeing Kim.” Tears welled in Regina’s eyes. “I really love her.”

To Brad, Regina seemed so very much like Marilyn Monroe—like a down-home girl who wanted to be in love and have a stable life, but who was charmed by the celebrity life. Brad sipped on his wine.

“I really care about her.”

Hartwell didn’t seem cut out for a fast-paced life. But she would have loved to have known that Brad compared her to Marilyn Monroe.

“I hate seeing Justin manipulate Kim,” she said. “The way he influences her.”

Too nice, just too nice,
Wilson thought,
like the type who could get caught up in, and swayed by, almost anything
.

“But I’m tired of the off-and-on thing—the way Kim leaves me for him and then comes back and spends the night with me.”

Brad suddenly wondered if Kim had feelings for Regina, but that she just didn’t want to make a commitment. He didn’t say anything, though.

Regina took another drink. “I’m ready to give up hoping that Kim will come back to me. That’s so fucking hard. I love her so much. But the hoping, the waiting, the trying to convince her, it’s just tearing me up. I’m going to try to just cut them out of my life. That’s what I want to do.”

“Well, yeah,” said Wilson. “That sounds like a good idea, since this is tearing you up. I think that’s a really good idea.”

Hartwell heard her phone ring, and her heart leapt. She jumped up to go answer it. She prayed to God that it was Kim calling.

Minutes later she came back. She took another swallow of liquid. “You know my mother was killed by a hangar door.” Her eyes watered over again. “I’m still really, really upset about that. I was so close to her. A lot closer to her than to my father.”

“Yeah,” said Brad, “I know what it’s like not to have a mother. Mine died a few years ago, too.”

“Yeah?” said Regina, and she smiled weakly. “I never really had the father I wanted. He’s not supportive of me and my lifestyle. He doesn’t agree with my sexuality. He’s gotten mad at me a bunch of times about that. We hardly ever speak. We’re not very close. I feel so alone in the world.” She took another gulp from her plastic cup. “I really love Kim. I mean really, really love Kim.”

Wilson watched Regina Hartwell. He noticed a few tiny bruises on the right side of her face. He noticed some bruises on the right side of her thigh, too. He pointed to them. “What happened?”

She shrugged and stood up, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and wandered around the room. “Somebody threw an ashtray at me.”

“This morning?”

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t look him in the face. “I have fainting spells sometimes, too. I find myself waking up on the floor.”

“You should see a doctor.”

“I don’t have any insurance.” Hartwell sat back down and slurped more on her drink. Her phone rang again, and, again, she prayed it would be Kim as she ran out the door to her apartment.

Brad pondered the situation. He’d heard Regina had money, loads of it, dump-truck loads of it, inherited just recently, but she hadn’t mentioned any money to him. She just seemed antsy, like she’d been doing ... something.

She walked back in and paced around the room. She picked up her cup and sucked the last drip out of it. Regina looked so very down, so rejected. Then she brightened. “Need someone to take care of your cats while you’re gone? I can do it.”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Drop off your key tomorrow.” And she was gone. It was about 11 p.m.

 

 

When Kim LeBlanc picked Justin Thomas up after the meeting with his posse, he was pissed. “The chicken-shit bastards didn’t have the guts to go through with it,” he griped. “They thought I was fuckin’ crazy, and blew me off. Can you believe that? Me, fuckin’ crazy? They’re the fuckin’ crazy ones.”

Thomas still griped and planned as they walked back into her apartment. He griped as he fell onto Kim’s bed. He griped about his friends. He griped about Regina. He planned Regina’s death.

Kim poured herself a few tablets of Valium and swallowed them down. “Go to sleep,” she said. “It’s just the cocaine.” She climbed into bed. “Regina’s just blowin’ hot air. Go to sleep. It’s just the cocaine. Go to sleep. In the morning, it’s going to be different.” She drifted off into a Valium-induced dreamland.