Disintegration: A Windy City Dark Mystery Read online

  I have a bus ride to take. But it’s still light out, and I need more help. The third bottle is larger than the first two, and lies on its side on the medicine cabinet, one shelf lower: Recovery.

  Chapter 8

  I haven’t seen Vlad in three years. His face is a distant memory, and I fear I may transpose the faces of others onto his. He gave me the package and he gave me the keys. The few things I’d kept, after I sold the house, after I fled the suburbs for the anonymity of a small apartment in the city, they were in storage. A friend. I forget his name now. Bill or Brian or something. Doesn’t matter. Vlad lent me a van. Quick trust on that guy.

  I don’t remember much from that trek.

  I remember my friend, shaking this man’s hand, him hugging me, and I was clay. His face dragging on the ground, skin slack, heart on his sleeve, his business card thrust into my hand. I wiped my ass with it that very night. A word bounces around my empty skull on the highway drive back south. Severed. Before merging onto the highway, I pull into a tiny liquor store in the middle of the cornfields and buy a couple of forties. Budweiser. I polish one off every fifteen minutes. And every twenty minutes I pull over and vomit up white foam—in half-filled parking lots, scattering whatever drunks are near me; on the side of the road, my knees in the grit, black moons grinding their way into the denim patchwork that covers my stalks. And then I do it again.

  By the time I get to the city, I am hammered.

  For years I’ve held a resentment against the kind of asshole that speeds around you, cutting over to the merge lane, flying past, only to move back into traffic four cars ahead of you. I’d done enough commuting to create a long-standing resentment toward this particular breed of jerk. Nine times out of ten it was a BMW.

  Today was not his day.

  A dark blue burst of speed on my right side, and I see him cruise past, only to shove his way back in again down the road. A smile crosses my face. I set the forty down. Traffic surges ahead, and I move up the best I can. Swerving in and out, finding the gaps, I punch the pedal, pushing the trembling van forward.

  I follow him for miles. He does it again and again. Riding up on some poor helpless sap’s ass, then gunning it to the right, punching it down the exit lane, only to cut back in again.

  My turn.

  Working my way down the right lane, two cars get off at Fullerton, and he’s right in front of me. I can see the back of his shiny, coiffed hair bobbing up and down, moving right and left, tilting back as he laughs at the funniest joke in the world, chirping into his cellphone, living the life. I see an upcoming exit lane, and he’s going to do it again. This time, I’m right behind him, and he has no idea. Brake lights and rearview mirrors are for suckers.

  My spine crackles with electricity. Palms sweaty, I wipe them on my pants. A twinge flutters in my stomach, and as he guns it wide, I floor it straight ahead. I find a gap in the middle lane, and cut over. He’s flying down the right lane, the exit lane, but he’s not exiting.

  Two cars in front of me, one car, then I’m clear. I’m still on his left, in his blind spot, off the left rear quarter panel. We swerve over at the same time, me to the right, and him to the left. He sees me too late to do anything but look up. And in this game of chicken, I’m not backing off. In fact, I’m overcompensating, I keep going to the right, my face filled with white teeth, a grin as wide as my head.

  We connect, metal on metal shrieking, sparks flying, and he tries to pull it to the right. I keep coming with him. My head is filled with cotton candy. I’m bending him over and fucking him in the ass. I’m salivating as I push his Berliner into the guardrail, his eyes wide, mouth agape and I’m laughing for the first time since…

  Well…

  Since it all happened.

  I keep coming, I accelerate, and push against the front of his car until it wedges between the van and the metal rail. Rushing up to us is a triangle of metal that separates the exit from the highway, and we’re not going to stop in time. With a bone-rattling finality we hit.

  I am rocked to the core of my frame. I glance over at him and he’s as pale as my inner thighs. Steam rises from the hood of his car, mangled metal pushing up into the air. His car slid up a bit past mine, and I get out of the van, covered in bits of broken glass and beer. Wandering over to him, my vision is a film of strawberry, the wind from the passing cars fluttering across my skin, horns and great groaning rushes of metal and air. His door is open and he’s trying to get out. He looks up at me, a gouge across his forehead, blood dripping down into his eyes. He can hardly see. I lean into the car.

  “It’s okay man, just hold on, I gotcha.”

  “What the fuck?…Oh man, my arm, I think it’s broken…. Oh, my baby, my car…”

  I pull him out by the neck, the head, the shoulders.

  “Ah shit, man that hurts, hold on….”

  I hold him up and when he raises his eyes I punch him in the face.

  “You stupid motherfucker,” I say.

  I hold his blue-striped button-down in my left fist and pummel him. As I ram my fist into his nose, it cracks—great squirts of hot liquid hitting my chest, again and again, until his face is gone. He goes limp, and filled with glee I drop him in the dirt, a bundle of bent limbs. I lean over him and whisper.

  “That’s for driving like a dick.”

  I stand up and look around. It feels like twenty minutes, but it’s more like twenty seconds. I run back over to the van, jump in, and back it up just enough to get around his broken beauty and head off down the exit, clipping the right rear taillight for good measure.

  Somehow the apartment appears. I park the van on a side street, the damaged side toward the sidewalk. I grab a screwdriver out of the back. Coated in sweat, eyes glazed over, I take off the license plates, and switch them with a white van up the street. Russo Flowers. And kick in his front left taillight. Funny how many white vans are out there just waiting to be used.

  Stumbling into my new hideout, I collapse in the middle of the floor. I giggle uncontrollably and pass out in a puddle of my own urine. And sleep like a baby.

  Chapter 9

  My first taste, that’s what it was. I stand in the shower, eyes closed, in the dark. The memory of that day flitters across my eyelids, and I lean against the white tile and let the hot water beat down on my back. I haven’t opened the envelope yet, but I know what it will say.

  A glimmer of light seeps under the bathroom door from the kitchen. Shapes and figures skitter across my flesh. A band of black rings wraps around my left biceps. An orange koi fish curls around my left calf. Bar codes on my wrists and I turn my hands over. I bend back and let the water baptize my head, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Opening my eyes, I grab the bar of soap, and lather up my hands. Another leftover, Oil of Olay. The shea butter. It’s a small thing, but it gives me great pleasure. The black letters on my knuckles. The gossamer wings across my shoulder blades. The spinal column tattooed over my own spinal column, the fifth vertebra fractured. Celtic crosses on my forearms, ancient Hebrew script, Japanese letters, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and fire-breathing dragons covered in scales. This is my new language.

  To record each incident, to mark the moment, I get a tattoo. Every time I bury another body, every time I burn down a house, inject an air bubble into a shaky vein, every time I corner a man in an alley, his head shaking back and forth, blubbering like an idiot, filling his pants with piss.

  “No, no man, you’ve got the wrong guy. No, please, wait, it was an accident, I have money. I mean it, I thought she was eighteen.”

  Every time I kill I get a new tattoo. I have a lot of tattoos.

  Chapter 10

  “Hey, baby, I guess you’re working late again. Taylor wants Daddy’s Special Chicken, and Robbie…”

  Chapter 11

  I’m off the grid now. I have been for a while. There are no mirrors in my apartment. I have forgotten my own face. My wife is a distant memory, and I can’t remember what she smells like, th
e melody of my son’s laugh, the gentle kisses of my daughter’s soft lips on my cheek. They are shadows that haunt my every movement, and I drown them out, blur them every chance I get.

  I lurk in the blind spots and only come out at night. I wait for the rain, the clouds to pass over, the wind to rush in off the lake. I don’t make eye contact, but when I do, you’ll know it’s your time. I can’t stop. And I don’t want to.

  The envelopes are all the same: a name, an address someplace in Chicago, and a picture. That’s the only variation. It can be a professional portrait. It can be a sketch. I’ve seen Polaroids and hasty 5x7s on Kodak film that’s printed at the grocery store, the drugstore, down at Walgreens—unaware of the death sentence they were issuing.

  I stand by the edge of the bed, and pick up the lipstick. Rolling it around in my hands, I pull open the drawer and toss it in with the rest of Holly’s stuff—a nail file, an amulet, a hairbrush, a thin tube of fragrance, a pair of leather gloves, and her thick pink vibrator. I stick my head in the drawer and inhale. For a moment she is here with me, her hands resting lightly on my back, leaning over, pressing her head against my back, wrapping her arms around me. I straighten up and she is gone.

  Sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed, the blinds down, I pick up the envelope and turn it over in my hands. Red currant drifts to me from the candle on the dresser. It’s sickly sweet, and I can taste Holly in my mouth. Sliding my finger under the lip of the paper, I run it down the length of the envelope, tearing it open, a hot flash of moonlight and the curved blade of my knife running up and into a rib cage, a gush of air, foul as a mausoleum, wet on my hands, up and in. So many nights standing naked in a strange backyard, a desolate cornfield, an alley, a bottle of lighter fluid in one hand, a lit match in the other, hovering over a hole in the ground, a steel barrel, a pile of black cloth and denim, white tube socks, all spattered with blood. Whether I’m invisible or not doesn’t matter. I believe I am. And it may be my downfall. But I have work to do. And the justice I sought when my own world toppled down around me, it never came. There are the laws of man, and then there are the laws of mankind.

  When I meet my maker I will look him square in the eye and ask him for nothing.

  The slip of white paper has only the two lines, in blocky letters:

  Peter Masterson

  2139 East Fulton Market

  His picture is from a party of some sort, a side shot. A big laugh and a shock of white hair. He looks like John Malkovich—if he was dying of AIDS.

  Chapter 12

  After the van, there is the park. And it spirals into the darkness from there.

  The sun is going down, a dull ball of red phosphorous glowing at the edge of my vision, and I’m licking a vanilla ice cream cone. The world is having dinner, television sets buzzing in the background as I sit on a green wooden bench, the slats about ten minutes away from annoying. The park is ringed with trees, oak and maple, a green crown encircling this patch of grass and amusement. Two college stoners heave a Frisbee back and forth on the far side of the park, shirtless and tan—young and blessed with nothing but time. In a beaten and faded black polo and blue jeans, I consider joining them, but don’t. Boots. I’d last five minutes.

  Four days have passed since the BMW and nothing. Vlad took one look at the van, back at me, realized what a mess I was, and just shook his head.

  “Out of your paycheck, it comes.”

  “What paycheck?”

  “Exactly,” he says, pointing a trigger finger at me and firing.

  I’ve worn the same clothes for as long as I can remember now. The apartment has four things in it: the dining room table, the armoire, the dresser, and the bed. There are no dishes yet, not a glass or a fork. I have not been able to brave any store beyond Nik’s. I may need help.

  The suit is sitting across the baseball diamond from me, thirty feet tops. I lick the cone, and wish it was a woman. I wish it had a taut, pink nipple on top of it. I watch him because I have nothing else to do, and I’m trying to create a moment here. Trying to claw my way up. My skin itches and a ring of gnats circles my head. The peace is starting to slip away.

  “That’s what I said to her, the stupid bitch.”

  He yaps into his cellphone, and at his feet sits a sad-eyed beagle puppy. I can’t look at it or I’ll start to cry. I’m just that raw. It sits there and pants, glancing up now and then. It’s not his dog, not his new little friend, I can tell that much. He’s oblivious. When the pup whimpers, he just yanks the leash. She whimpers for the tenth time, then simply squats and pees. The pup, it turns out, is a girl. A look of large-eyed joy washes over her face. She must have been waiting a long time. When the puddle creeps over to his black wingtips he finally looks down.

  “Goddamnit, what the hell…” he yells. “Hold on, man, I gotta call you back. Dog just pissed on my brand new Ferragamos. Naw, man, it’s Heather’s. I know. Whipped.”

  He clicks the thin phone shut and slides it into his jacket pocket and bends over to look at the puppy, her tongue wagging, her furry little butt shaking back and forth, looking up at this pin-striped giant with nothing but love. He backhands her across the face. I drop my cone and her yelp echoes across the park.

  My stomach turns and I lick the top row of my teeth, glancing around. Clenching and unclenching my fists I adjust my seat. The puppy pops back up, head bowed, ambling over to him again—wanting to know what she did wrong, what she can do now to fix it.

  The phone chirps and he straightens back up. A plane roars overhead. O’Hare to someplace. I watch the silver beast move slowly and wish I was on it. Somebody is making a roast, garlic maybe, onions. It smells like nothing I’ve known for weeks. I could chew off my own arm right now. It’s a moment at a dinner table, all eyes on Mom, blessing said, hands clasped, a pause before the silverware clanks and scrapes across the plates.

  He rambles on, a laugh here and there, the sun going down now, the Frisbee players gone. We are alone except for a homeless guy at a trash can by the pavilion. Way too many layers for this kind of day. The occasional car drifts by, bass thumping, a flash of red light. I don’t think the suit knows I’m even here.

  “No, don’t,” I whisper.

  The puppy is lying down by his feet, sniffing the dirt, pawing at her nose. A loose shoelace flops in front of her face as he moves his feet around. She nips at it. She tugs at it, and pulls. He moves his foot again, a good game going now, and she’s entranced. She barks a quick yip, and he waves a hand at her.

  “I know,” he says. “Two martinis, that’s all it took, I’m telling you man…”

  He places his foot by the puppy again and she bites out, dragging her sharp baby teeth over the soft black leather, long scrapes and he stops talking.

  “Dude, hold on. I’m gonna kill this damn dog.”

  He sets the phone down and looks at the puppy.

  “You like that, huh? Tastes real good, huh bitch? Well, here, have a little more.”

  I can hear him, and I go cold. Few things are sacred—babies and puppies, kittens.

  He kicks her in the face and she goes tumbling, snot and blood flying as she flips end over end, and I’m up fast. She lands in the dust of the infield and doesn’t move. Not a yelp or whimper. I go.

  “Sorry, man, listen, where was I,” he continues, back on the phone, one leg crossed over the other.

  I’m across the dusty ground in four steps, a quick glance over to the puppy. She stirs, but doesn’t get up. Reaching out I grab the phone out of his hand and drop it under my boot heel and twist it, crushing it in one motion. He stands up with an open mouth and I shove my fist in it. I grab his lapel and I’m back at the van. I pound him again, over and over, hardly a word escaping his lips.

  “Hey…”

  I let go of him so I can use both fists, because one is not enough.

  “Dude…”

  A flurry of knuckles, right, left, right. His neck snaps back and forth and I finish him off with a black hole uppercut from beyo
nd my hazy vision, a swarm of gnats and bugs around me. The sun has gone, and in the last bit of daylight, the shot catches him squarely on the jaw, snapping it, sending him reeling over the bench behind him and then onto his back. I walk around and drop to my knees. Placing my hands on both sides of his neck I squeeze. The world has gone dead around me. The only sound is my labored breath, lips in a snarl, spittle flying, nose running as I push in, a cracking sound as my thumbs bury in his neck. My teeth are bared like a rabid hyena. I look up to his eyes and they’ve faded to ivory, two buttons, and I let go. Standing up, three birds shoot out of a tree across the fading blue sky. Shadows wrap around me and I scan the park.

  Nobody.

  I ease over to the puppy and pick her up. She’s not dead, but she’s hardly breathing. I pick her up and walk toward a vet I saw just down the street, over on Milwaukee. I hold her to my chest as tears stream down my face. I’m sobbing, my shoulders shaking as I cut through the alley.

  At the Wicker Park Veterinary Clinic I walk in the door, the bell jingling, and place the puppy on the counter. Before the ladies in their colorful smocks can look up, I’ve turned and headed back out the door, catching it before it closes.

  “Sir? Sir, you can’t just leave this here, sir?” the woman says.

  But I do. I lunge to the left, back behind the building, out of sight, and start jogging down the stinking alleyway toward my apartment.

  “No more,” I say to the black alley, as a part of me shrivels, withers, and dies. A hard substance, cold and solid, settles into the middle of my chest. It’s found a new home, this darkness. I welcome it.