Killer Move

“Who’s this?” the voice said.

“David Warner.”

“And?”

“I’ve got some serious . . . problems.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You . . . how? How do you know?”

“Why are you calling, David?”

Warner had tilted forward until his forehead rested on the rough, pebbled wall above the phone. He used a sentence he had never previously uttered in his life.

“I . . . need help.”

He explained his situation. He explained his injuries. He explained why he could not go home. Though he knew it was probably a mistake, he mentioned the heavy financial dues he’d paid every year.

The man on the other end told him what to do. He gave him a phone number, told him to leave a message as to his whereabouts, and then to keep out of sight.

Warner started to thank him, but realized the phone had already been put down. He called the toll-free number he’d been given, left the message, saying he would be on the beach in front of the unfinished Silver Palms development. It seemed as safe a place as any. No tourist was going to recognize him.

He put the phone back on the hook and shambled out toward the beach.

He didn’t know what time it was now, but if children were up and about and looking for shells, it had to be coming up for nine. Maybe later. He hoped they’d come for him soon. He really didn’t feel very well.

“I saw her face,” said a voice.

It came from behind, a point about six or eight feet up the gentle sandy slope. He recognized the speaker. He didn’t turn. No point turning to face the dead.

“I saw it every night when I lay in bed. I saw how it looked when she realized how drunk you were.”

Warner let his head drop, and answered to the sand between his knees. “She was a bar slut. A whore. She’d seen drunk gringos before.”

“But not like you. Not a man who’d get her into the back of a car, with me there in the passenger seat so it looked safe. Not someone who’d drive her way out of town and then pull off the road and stop the car.”

“Shut up,” Warner said.

“And I was just too high to do anything. Too drunk, too many joints. And fuck, David, I was only seventeen. So were you. How should I have known something like that was going to happen?”

“I didn’t know, either.”

“Yeah, you did. I’d always thought there was ice in you, but . . . fuck, Dave. Do you remember the way her face looked afterward? What you did to it with the rock?”

He remembered. He remembered waking the next morning, on the beach, miles from the mess he’d hidden in an abandoned house—he’d tried to get Katy to help, but she was too screwed up and drunk and crying too hard. Remembered feeling sick, remembered the sense of horrified awe at what he’d done.

Remembered the erection, too.

He heard Katy crying behind him, here on Lido. He’d heard her on that beach in Mexico, too, the morning after his life changed. Poor dead Katy, who’d looked a little like Lynn did. Katy, who he’d known since they were five years old. Katy, who if things had turned out differently could have been by his side in a totally different kind of life.

“I loved you,” the voice behind him said.

“I know that now.”

Warner knew whose fault his life was. But who do you blame, when you’re the one? Who do you take it out on? You can’t punish yourself—at least any more than you already do by turning your life into an endless dark carnival. So you hurt others. Not always intentionally, either. Sometimes you just lash out. Things get out of control. You watch your hands act. Verbal warnings turn into violence, beatings turn into a bloodied mess.

And your dick gets hard.

Gradually, the sound of crying faded out. Not as if she’d stopped—Katy would never stop crying now—but as if something had slowly dragged her away.

Half an hour after that there was a tap on his shoulder. At first he thought it was Katy come back again, but then he realized the tap had hurt. Physically, in the real world.

He looked up and saw someone standing over him, a silhouette blown into soft-edged white by the sun.

“I’ve come to help,” it said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Forty minutes later we were back on the mainland. When I started taking my surroundings in properly again, I saw we were heading south on the Tamiami Trail, a chunk of anonymous urban sprawl twenty minutes from downtown. Office supplies, perfunctory restaurants, copy shops, places to get your exhaust fixed, and the single-story DeSoto Square Mall. The woman was driving with negligent skill, as if this were a video game she’d played every day of her life. She appeared to be looking out for something.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Here.”

She swerved off the highway into the parking lot of a Burger King—and drove straight toward a space on the far side, decelerating only at the last minute. She snapped off the engine and rubbed her face in her hands. She rubbed hard, as if her face had done her wrong. I stared out through the windshield at a brick wall.