Angie’s palm caressed my hip absently and she turned and gave me a “Can you believe this?” roll of her eyes. She suddenly squeezed the flesh over my hip, where she’d claimed I had love handles, and she bit her lower lip in an attempt to keep from smiling. She failed.
“Phil, you’ve been drinking. Haven’t you?”
Scratch. Scratch.
I looked at the window, but the leaves were gone, bowing back in the dark breeze.
“I know that, Phillip,” she said sadly. “I know. And I’m trying.” Her hand fell away from my hip and she turned toward the phone and stood up from the bed. “I don’t. I don’t hate you.”
She stood with one knee on the bed, looking out the window, the phone cord pressed against the backs of her thighs, and worked her way back into her T-shirt.
I got out of the bed, too, tossed my jeans and shirt back on. The house was cold without the press of body heat, and I didn’t feel like crawling back under the covers while she chatted with Phil.
“I’m not judging,” she said. “But if Arujo picks tonight to come after you, wouldn’t you rather have sharp wits?”
The white beam of light crested her shoulder and the glow of candlelight and blinked three times against the upper wall in front of her. She had her head down and didn’t notice, so I left the bedroom and walked down the hallway, hugging my arms against the cold and watched through the living room window as Tim Dunn crossed the street toward the house.
I reached to deactivate the alarm, saw that it had lost its power in the blackout.
I opened the door before he could ring the bell.
“What’s up?” I said.
He had his head down against the moisture sweeping off the trees and I realized he was looking at my bare feet.
A walkie-talkie squawked from the living room.
“Cold?” Dunn said and tugged his earlobe.
“Yeah. Come on in,” I said. “Shut the door behind you.”
I turned in the hallway and Devin’s voice burst over the walkie-talkie: “Patrick, get the fuck out of the house. Arujo set us up. Arujo set us up. He’s not in Nahant.”
I turned back as Dunn raised his head and Evandro Arujo’s face stared out at me from under the cap brim.
“Arujo’s not in Nahant, Patrick. He’s right here. In the rest of your life.”
34
Before I could speak, Evandro pressed a stiletto against the skin under my right eye. He dug the point into the socket bone and closed the door behind him.
There was already blood on the knife.
He noticed me looking at it and smiled sadly.
“Officer Dunn,” he whispered, “won’t be turning twenty-five, I’m afraid. Bummer, huh.”
He pushed me backward by digging the point in harder against the bone and I took a few steps down the hallway.
“Patrick,” he said, his other hand on Dunn’s service revolver, “if you make a sound, I’ll pluck out your eye and shoot your partner before she’s halfway out of the bedroom. Understood?”
I nodded.
In the faint light from the candles in the bedroom I could see he wore Dunn’s uniform shirt; it was dark with blood.
“Why’d you have to kill him?” I whispered.
“He used gel in his hair,” Evandro said. He held a hand to his lips as we reached the bathroom, midway down the center hall, and motioned for me to stop.
I did.
He’d shaved the goatee and the hair peeking out from under the cap brim was dyed a honey blond. His colored contacts were a faded gray, and I assumed the inch of sideburns by each ear were fake, since he didn’t have them when I saw him last.
“Turn around,” he whispered. “Slowly.”
From the bedroom I could hear Angie sigh. “Phil, really, I’m very tired.”
She hadn’t heard the walkie-talkie. Fuck.
I turned around as Evandro placed the flat edge of the stiletto to my face and allowed it to slide with the skin as my head turned away. I felt the point skip across the back of my neck and then bite into the hollow space under my right ear, in the gap between my skull and jaw.
“You fuck with me,” he whispered in my ear, “and this point comes out through your nose. Take small steps.”
“Phillip,” Angie said. “Please…”
The bedroom had two doorways. One fronted the hall, the other, six feet beyond, led into the kitchen. We were four feet from the first doorway when Evandro pressed the stiletto point into my skin to stop me. “Ssh,” he whispered. “Ssh.”
“No,” Angie said and her voice sounded weary. “No, Phil, I don’t hate you. You’re a good man.”
“I was twelve feet away out there,” Evandro whispered. “You and your partner and poor Officer Dunn chatting about securing the house against me, and I’m crouched in the neighbor’s hedge. I could smell you from there, Patrick.”
I felt a small popping sensation as the stiletto point broke the skin at the edge of my jaw like a pin.
I couldn’t see my options. If I tried for an elbow to Evandro’s chest, which would be the first thing he’d expect, there was still more than a fifty percent chance he’d be able to shove the knife through my brain anyway. All other possibilities—fist to the groin, foot brought down hard on his instep, sudden pivot to my left or right—carried the same likelihood of success. One of his hands held the knife, the other the gun, and both weapons dug into my body.
“If you’d just call back in the morning,” Angie said, “we’ll talk then.”
“Or not,” Evandro whispered. He nudged me forward.
At the edge of the doorway, he suddenly jerked the gun from my side. The point of the knife left my ear and dug into the back of my head where my spinal column and the
base of my skull met. He spun in front of the doorway with my body blocking his.
Instead of standing by the bed where I’d left her, Angie was gone. The phone lay off the hook in the center of the bed, and I could hear Evandro’s breath quicken as he craned his head over my shoulder to get a better look.
The sheet on the bed still bore the imprints of our bodies. Her cigarette fed ash into the ashtray and a pirouette of smoke into the air. The candle flames glowed like the yellow eyes of jungle cats.
Evandro looked toward the closet, saw that it was filled with enough clothes to hide a body.
He nudged me again and I again considered elbowing him.
He pointed Dunn’s service revolver over my shoulder at the closet, pulled back the hammer.