Twenty-Two
“He said his name was Hank.” Mercy didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice, and wouldn’t have known he was the one speaking if not for the effort of moving his lips, his tongue, his jaw, and the way the memories were being pulled out of him, suddenly, like a caught rope whose knot had suddenly popped around the corner and now the whole length of it was being reeled in, hand over hand. “If he ever gave anyone a last name, that was probably fake, too. Fuck me .”
“What happened?” Ava asked. She didn’t say how the hell could you have forgotten he prospected your club? but he was asking it of himself. He’d looked so different as a kid, lanky, and big-eared, and awkward as all hell. He’d looked like the Mad magazine kid, and now he looked like G.I. Joe. Pair that with the fake name, and anyone could have been forgiven having bumped into him a time or two more then twenty years ago.
But Mercy should have known. How could someone loathe him strongly enough to terrorize his family, and his club, and steal his son, and he couldn’t recall his face?
His own face was buried in his hands, and he lifted it to peer at the worried ones around him.
“I never spent much time with him.” Except for that time he helped him pick up a load of unassembled guns from home, and Remy had insisted he stay for lunch. That fucker had been in his house. Had sat at his table. And now Remy’s namesake was…
He swallowed thickly, and continued. “Frenchie was his sponsor, and he said he didn’t think the kid could cut it, that he’d never last the year. He was too nervy, and he wanted it too badly to play it cool. He was the sort who was never going to fit in. Frenchie said…” He swallowed again, recalling the comment, a throwaway line over beer and darts, bursting fresh and pulpy in his mind now. “That he thought he had a screw loose. He said, ‘That one’s gonna cook somebody’s rabbit.’ I thought maybe he was just weird, but…”
But he wasn’t. He was unhinged. Dangerous.
“Where’s Frenchie now?” Ava asked.
“Cali. He transferred years ago.”
“What the hell did you do to him?” Colin asked, “Why the hell does he hate you so bad?”
Other pieces were tumbling into place, clicking together like Legos. “Nothing. Nothing big,” he amended, because it hadn’t been big, and wouldn’t have mattered that much to most people. “But I said…”
He remembered it, then, the exact words he’d used.
He turned his head and caught Ava’s gaze. “The PI, the one who got hired over the phone? Who was tailing the old ladies?”
She nodded, eyes big and dark in the porch shadow, face rigid with tension.
“The company that hired them, what was it called again?”
She frowned, thought for a moment. “Wantabi.”
“What is that, Japanese?” Colin asked.
“No.”
~*~
It was Bob himself who ventured out into the swamp and finally approached Mercy – when he was still Felix by name, because his brothers hadn’t heard the full story yet, but was no longer Felix on the inside – the only one brave enough to run his boat up onto the gently-sloping grass bank and walk up to join him in the cool shade of the cypresses.
Felix hadn’t known how many days had passed. He’d slept, at some point, because he’d awakened on his side in the dew-damp grass, soft as cushions beneath his aching joints. He knew that the sun had cycled through all its stations in the sky: the bright yellow haze of morning, the crushing weight of noon, pinning sheet after sheet of humid air to the ground, wringing every drop of sweat from his body. And then the candy pinks and oranges of sunset through the swanky black silhouettes of the moss-draped swamp trees. When he heard Bob’s approach, he wiped a hand down his face to ensure it was still there, and felt the rasp of several days’ worth of beard growth along his jaw.
He knew it was Bob by the particular way he breathed as he dragged the boat farther up onto dry ground. And by the way he walked up slowly, swishing his feet intentionally through the grass so he didn’t startle him, and the way he stopped a few paces back. It was a quiet spot, way out here, and that was one of the reasons Felix had chosen it. No cicadas, no frogs. Only the high twitter of birds, musical and respectful overhead.
“It’s pretty, here,” Bob said, when he could have said so many other things. Things like this isn’t sanctioned; you could get arrested if anyone knew you’d done this; have you cracked up, boy? No one could blame you . But he said, “You did good.”
The soil had dried out on top, baked smooth and cracked by the sun, two perfect ovals, seven by two, and six feet deep. He’d fashioned crosses, and driven them in with a sledgehammer, one that rested faithfully in the grass beside him.
In a low, soothing voice, Bob said, “I had some of the boys take care of the mess in the house. You don’t have to go back there unless you want to.”
A fly landed on the tip of Felix’s nose, and he swatted it away.
Bob’s hand landed on his shoulder, and Felix wanted to swat it away, too, but found he lacked the strength, suddenly.
“Why don’t you get in the boat with me, son? We’ll go get you a shower and something hot to eat.”
Felix got in the boat, and they rode back to the marina, and then climbed into Bob’s truck. He got a shower, and a hot meal. More days passed. Bob sat him down, and Felix told him exactly what had happened with Landau, in perfect detail, each moment of that afternoon indelibly etched into his mind.
Merci .
Bob must have told the others, because they started calling him Mercy after that. It was fitting, he supposed. He didn’t feel much like Felix anymore.
The last time he saw Hank the prospect was the day the police came sniffing around asking him about Landau.
Bob called him to the office, and when he reached the threshold, he caught sight of starched khaki uniform shirts and gun belts. He froze. On instinct more than anything; the expected fear didn’t hit. Not so much as a whiff of nerves. He’d killed Landau, had heard him beg for mercy and delivered it to him only once he was done with him. Had killed his buddies, and fed them to Big Son without a backward thought. A couple of beer-bellied sheriff’s deputies couldn’t spook him.
“Felix,” Bob said, with a flat, warning look, “these gentlemen would like a word.” He got up from the desk and offered his chair to Mercy. Left the room and shut them in together.
“Let me start by saying,” the older of the two deputies said, “that we’re terribly sorry for your loss. We hear you just lost your father and your grandmother.”
“Yeah.” The sound that fell out of his mouth couldn’t be his own voice, but he couldn’t seem to engage the authentic article.
“Remy was well-liked around town, always donated to the department charity. We’d like to send flowers to the funerals. A few of the boys even want to attend the service.”
“There’s no service,” he said, in that same awful, wooden tone.
The second deputy, moon-faced and friendly-looking, lifted his brows. “No? Private burial?”
“Yeah.”
“We could still send flowers,” the first said.
Mercy didn’t grace that with a response, and the deputy sighed. “The thing is, well, the reason we know about your dad…”
Mercy knew what was coming.
“…is because we heard it from your mama. In fact, she called us .”
“Did she.”
“If Remy’s dead, why didn’t anyone call it in?” the second deputy asked, gently.
Mercy shrugged, and leaned back in the chair. It was still warm from Bob’s body heat, and smelled heavily of cigarette smoke. “It was too late. Nothing to be done.”
The younger deputy shifted forward, looking alarmed. “But – you should still call an ambulance. There’s protocol, there’s – they were dead, man, and–”
The older one shushed him with a gesture and said, “Felix. What happened to your father and grandmother?” His brows steepled sharply, a groove deep as a knife wound pressed between them. “Where did you put them?”
“They’re in the ground, just like she intended.”
“ Where ?”
Mercy didn’t answer.
The older deputy sighed, while the younger’s brows shot up. “Your mother seems to think that you had something to do with her boyfriend going missing.”
“My mother’s a whore.”
The younger one gasped.
“You ought to be arresting her right now for solicitation instead of asking me about–” His voice broke, and for one awful moment, he thought he would finally shed a tear over the whole hideous nightmare. But then that sound that wasn’t his voice at all finished for him: “My father.”
The cops traded a look. Felix knew Dale Dandridge, because he’d been friendly with Remy, but Dale wasn’t here, and he had no idea what sorts of feelings these two held for his family – of which he was now the only surviving member.
“Felix,” the older one said, tone careful, hand splayed out on the desk in a gesture of appeal. Let’s be reasonable , that tone, and that hand said. “We’re just trying to get to the truth: that’s our job. Someone’s leveled a pretty serious accusation against you, and it would be irresponsible if we didn’t investigate.”
Felix nodded. “Okay. You’re investigating. That’s fine.”
The older deputy nodded in return. “Can you tell us when you last saw Oliver Landau?”
“Dunno. Six months, maybe. Landau’s a piece of shit, so I try to steer clear of him.”
The younger deputy sighed, but before he could speak, the office door opened, and Bob said, “You boys all good in here? Felix, Burt’s looking for you: your bike’s blocking him in. Gentlemen,” he said, stepping into the room, addressing the deputies, “maybe I can help you out with your questions.”
Felix – Mercy; he was Mercy, now, and though Bob was using his real name for the cops’ benefit, nobody else called him that around the clubhouse anymore – stood, and took the exit for what it was: a momentary salvation.
But later, once the brown cruiser had trundled out of the parking lot, Bob pulled him aside, face grave. “Today was them being polite. We’ve been respectful of them for the most part, so today they were respectful in turn. But they’re going to keep looking for Landau, even if he was a piece of shit. You’ve as good as admitted to burying Remy and your gram,” he said, gently. “That alone is a crime. It won’t be so hard for them to believe that you had something to do with Landau disappearing, especially if Dee keeps driving them crazy.”
“Her word against ours.”
Bob tilted his head. “Sure. But who do you think’s in the business of giving cops favors ?” He lifted his brows meaningfully, and Mercy wished he’d had Dee lashed to a kitchen chair beside Landau that day.
Despite his caution, and his warning, Bob didn’t try to leash Mercy in the months that followed when Landau’s death, and the vacuum it left behind among the scuzzy redneck crowd, opened up a new, deadly turf war. Mercy’s newly discovered skills were put to good use, and the men from which he extracted intel and confessions all went on to join Landau in his underwater gator buffet. Once things had stabilized, and once police pressure grew too great, Bob would hug Mercy, kiss him on the cheek, and send him packing to Tennessee, where Ghost Teague was in need of a bloodthirsty bodyguard for his wife and young daughter.
But before all of that, Mercy would make one of the greatest mistakes of his life, and wouldn’t even know he’d done it until more than twenty years later.
That day, he nodded, murmured something less than reassuring to Bob in the hallway, and ambled down to the bar to see about getting fantastically drunk. The Lean Bitch behind the counter took one look at him, and started pouring drinks. None of his brothers were stupid enough to approach him, and after a while – who knew how long – his world had taken on pleasantly fuzzy edges, thoughts sluggish and heartbeat pronounced in his chest, a slow lub-dub punctuated by the clack of pool balls somewhere behind him.
The alcohol numbed his face, and dulled the gnawing ache in his stomach, and blurred the lights into a yellow smear that followed his head each time he turned it, leaving behind streaks like sci-fi lightspeed special effects.
He lifted his latest glass of Scotch on the rocks – he’d lost track of what number it was – to his lips and drained it off, ice cubes a pleasant cold burn against his lips. When he lowered the glass for the Lean Bitch to fill it again, he became aware that someone had climbed onto the stool to his left.
Mercy didn’t turn his head. He didn’t want to know who was unobservant enough to sit right next him.
A vaguely familiar voice said, “Hey, Felix? Er, I mean, Mercy?” His new nickname came out funny, like the speaker couldn’t quiet believe he was using it, or was maybe worried he wasn’t saying it right. What a dweeb. What a clueless fucking idiot.
Mercy ignored him.
“Hey. Mercy,” the kid repeated, more insistent, and Mercy finally turned his head.
The room tilted crazily, but he didn’t feel in danger of falling. He was somehow detached from the wild see-saw of his vision. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt as grounded in his own body as he did now, save for the hours he’d spent working on Landau in the kitchen, while the flies droned, and the blood pattered down onto the linoleum.
The prospect – Mercy couldn’t recall his name, now, and wasn’t sure if he’d ever known it – sat sideways on the stool, one elbow braced on the bar, staring intently at Mercy. He really was a scrawny scrap of a thing; that in and of itself wasn’t damning: plenty of guys had late growth spurts, or never spurted at all. It was the size of the fight in the dog, and all of that. But this kid’s fight was mostly fear, a tooth-jarring, nervy, fractious energy that forever seemed caught between total submission and full-on explosion. He performed his duties with obsequious obedience, but seemed miserable doing it, like he thought he shouldn’t have to do grunt work; like he was waiting desperately for someone to notice what a good little prospect he was.
The sight of him now made Mercy sick. “The fuck do you want?” he asked.
The kid leaned in closer, close enough to count the pimples clustered in a triangle to the left of his nose: there were six. “I wanted to ask if you were okay,” he said. “You know…after your dad and all.”
Mercy blinked at him, and tried to get his sluggish thoughts in order. Tried to make sense of what this kid had said, because surely he wasn’t so stupid as to come over here and ask Mercy if he was “okay,” after his “dad and all.” Surely not.
“Are…you…okay?” the prospect – was his name Chet? or Chip? – repeated, slowly and loudly, like Mercy was stupid.
(Or drunk. He was that.)
Just as the alcohol hadn’t been able to dull the memory of Daddy and Gram, the sight of them burned into his brain, never to be forgotten, it couldn’t now tamp down the anger that welled up inside him. It started in his stomach, a sudden burst of heat, and boiled up into his chest and throat like heartburn.
Sober, he would have recognized that he was lashing out, venting his howling rage and grief on the first idiot who dared to speak about what he’d been through as if it was anything so small as to be contained in a few words over a drink. But right now, the prospect’s concern hit the liquor in his veins like a dropped match, and he exploded.
“What the fuck do you think?” He didn’t know he’d roared the question until chairs screeched back and heads whipped around. All conversation in the clubhouse ceased, and into the resultant silence, Mercy roared, “Are you fucking serious? Am I okay ? How do you think I am, dipshit?”
Shouting felt…better than he’d expected. He wasn’t sure he’d ever shouted, save to be heard above the roar of the boat motor, when he and Daddy were out on the water, cruising from one line to the next, the wind snatching at their hair and stealing the words from their mouths, so even with yelling loud enough to be hoarse, it was still an exercise in lip reading.
Daddy …
He realized that his eyes were shut, and when they were, all he saw was Daddy sprawled out on the floor. And Gram in the yard, her skirt tangled around her legs…
He opened his eyes, and found that the prospect had gone white to the roots of his not-quite-brown hair, eyes big and frightened.
Good , Mercy thought. Leave me the fuck alone .
He threw back the rest of his drink, braced a hand on the edge of the bar, and was readying to attempt standing when a remarkable thing happened.
The prospect blinked, and his face screwed up into an expression so pinched, and pink, and ridiculous that Mercy didn’t immediately recognize it as anger.
“Fuck you,” the kid hissed, and Mercy burst out laughing.
It was a mean laugh, rather than his convivial chuckle; he wasn’t sure if that was a sound he could ever recapture. “Fuck me?” he asked. “Is that what you just said? Fuck me ?”
The prospect sucked in a shuddering breath, puffed out his skinny chest, and said, “Yeah, fuck you, I’m trying to be your friend–”
His anger reached a dizzying new peak. Or maybe that was the booze. Who the hell knew. But this kid was on the straight and narrow to becoming a bitter, angry loser just like Oliver Landau. How many years before he went from a nasty little suck-up to murdering old women in their own yards?
I’m trying to be your friend.
Mercy shoved him. Hard.
He tumbled back off his stool and landed flat on his back with an oof of expelled breath.
Mercy stood over him. “You’re not my friend.” He pointed at him, and his hand was steady, and it was far too easy to imagine leaning down to grip his shirt and slam his head back on the floorboards. “You’re nothing but a chickenshit wannabe who doesn’t know his place. Don’t you ever speak to me about my family again.”
His brothers called after him as he stalked to the door and let himself out onto the porch. Exhaustion, and grief, and nausea crashed over him, along with a fair measure of shame. He slumped down onto a bench and buried his face in his hands.
He was like a boat cut loose from the dock, drifting with the currents, rudderless. He’d never been rich, never been lucky, never been destined for anything important or meaningful. But his life had made sense, and he’d been happy, in his own way. Happy out on the water, checking lines, hauling in gators. Happy at the dinner table, swatting away flies with napkins, and listening to Remy’s broad, drawling voice tell a story he’d heard a hundred times, and which he’d happily listen to again and again. He’d begun to wonder, in a distant and half-fearful way, if getting married was in the cards for him. If he might someday meet a woman who was nothing like his mother, who would love him, and in turn love the children they made together.
And now his tiny world was shattered, and he had no idea how to breathe through the pain, much less live through it.
His head sloshed and swayed, and he was only distantly aware of the door slamming. A few moments later, a bike started up. When he lifted his head, he saw the prospect’s narrow silhouette in the glare of the security light. He walked his bike backward clumsily, feet slipping in the gravel, and nearly went down. But then he got it pointed out, and revved the throttle, and took off jerkily, spraying gravel.
Mercy slumped back against the wall and felt like the world’s biggest asshole.
~*~
“Wannabe,” Mercy said, now, and his head swam like it had then, though he hadn’t been drinking. “That’s what I called him. Wantabi.” He looked up at Colin, at Alex, at Ava, still perched unmoving as a raptor beside him. “Want. To. Be. Wannabe.”
“Shit,” Colin murmured. “Fucker thought he was clever.”
“Mercy,” Alex said, face creased with a cop-like concern that was, strangely enough, comforting. He looked authoritative and assessing, which was good considering Mercy’s brain threatened to drift out to sea. “You were a jerk to him, yeah, but let’s be real: what you said wasn’t that bad . It wasn’t stalk-you-arrest-you-kidnap-your-kid bad.”
“I thought we already established that he’s a psychopath,” Ava said.
“Yes, and he is. Just even more of one than I thought,” Alex said with a wry headshake. “You’re sure that’s all you said to him?”
“Yeah. Nobody saw him again after that night.” Mercy frowned. “He didn’t even return the cut. Bob was pissed about that.”
“Two guesses where the decoy you got a Lean Dogs cut, and the first one doesn’t count,” Colin said.
Alex scratched at the back of his neck. “So here’s the scenario: Boyle used to spy on you guys when you hung out as kids. During that time, he built up some fictional mental picture of being your friend, of being a part of your group, and when he was eighteen, he prospected the club under the name Hank. A long-held fantasy like that would have become a very involved and precious thing to him. A castle made of spun sugar. Your rejection of him, no matter how mild, was like dumping a bucket of water over the whole thing.”
“Nice metaphor, Hemingway,” Colin said.
“Shut up. What I’m saying is, calling a normal, emotionally stable guy a ‘wannabe’ would have either sent him packing, or made him step up and prove his value to the club. As far as hazing goes, your outburst was small potatoes. But with Boyle, it shattered him. Shattered a fantasy that, most likely, based on his home life, was a sustaining, driving force for him. Without it…” He shrugged. “You’re talking total mental breakdown, or the creation of a new fantasy as a means of staying afloat.”
“And the new fantasy,” Ava said, “was making Mercy pay.”
Alex nodded.
“Jesus,” she muttered, rubbing at her forehead, and then she turned back to Mercy. She petted his arm the way you would soothe a horse, steady, slow strokes down the length of it, from elbow to wrist. She sighed. “Regina said that he mentioned the clearing specifically, but that he also said, after they’d slept together, when he was sex-drunk and stupid, that he was, quote, ‘going to poison all the places that made’ you.”
“Metaphorically?” Colin asked.
“She wouldn’t know what a metaphor is,” Ava quipped. “But I’d assume so, yes.”
“Shit, we need to call Knoxville,” Colin said.
Mercy shook his head. “No. No, he already had his crack at Knoxville. He’s here now. This is about the early years.” He looked at Ava, at the pretty, beloved lines of her face, somehow lovelier with fatigue, and ferocity. “I was a loser kid. There’s only three places here that made me.
“Home. Here. And the swamp. But Harlan’s not a boatman, so he’ll go where the swamp took me, at the end of every day: home.”