Reflections. Chapter Two.
By MarkALever
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Two
The Senator’s Nephew
Henry Caine’s sausage-like fingers stuffed a handful of fries into his mouth as he managed the final stair up to his first-floor apartment. Pleased with himself that he only had to stop twice to catch his breath, he must be losing weight at last. Only twenty stairs, one for each of his years and he hated every single one of them. His breathing laboured at stair ten, he began to sweat at fifteen, and by the time twenty came along, his inner thighs were sore from chafing.
In his final year of high school, his gym teacher, Mr Barstow, who was to retire after that semester, had shouted in front of the entire class that Caine had fewer physical attributes than an overweight sloth. Everyone present, except two, laughed at Caine, and they were Charlie Henderson and Wade Smolinsky, the only two friends he had. A week later in the middle of the night, both helped Caine nail the head of Barstow’s pet cat to his back door. The hammering had woken Barstow who came out to find the rest of his cat burning on the back porch, with Caine, Henderson, and Smolinsky standing there laughing.
Caine walked forward. ‘You tell anyone about this, Barstow, and you and your house will be next.’
After that, Mr Barstow retired a half-term early and the school never saw or heard from him again.
Caine’s apartment was number thirteen, and the third door down his landing. He’d never been superstitious about the unlucky number, if anything he considered it lucky, the place was nice, it was big, and, best of all, it was paid for by his Uncle Eddie, the Senator, who agreed to Caine living there free of charge if he promised to stay out of trouble and not bring the Caine name into disrepute.
He turned at the top of the stairs to see his neighbour, Mrs Houseman, the nosey cow from across the way at number eleven. She was outside mopping her own small patch of landing and smiling as she sang some shitty gospel tune. Every night she’d be out at ten, smiling, singing, mopping, and dragging that damn tin bucket along the floor.
He passed apartment nine and grinned as he walked over the silly bitch’s nice clean floor.
‘Oh the Lorrrrd he comes down to the rear-ver. Oh the Lorrrrd he comes down to the sea. And when he− Hey...’
‘Oops, sorry, Missus Houseman, I didn’t see you there.’
‘The hell you didn’t see me, fat-boy. Is you blind or summin? Guess you need spectacles, huh?’
‘I see fine,’ he said. And if you ever call me fat-boy again, someone’s gonna shut that mouth of yours permanently.’ He dropped a few fries and smeared them with his foot over the floor.
‘Don’t you threaten me, Henry Caine, I ain’t afraid o’ you. Just coz you got some high-flyin’ uncle up in DC don’t make you no big tough guy, ya know.’
‘Boo!’ he shouted, then belly-laughed when she jumped.
He turned and tossed more fries over his shoulder, some landing in her bucket, all the while singing the same tune he just heard; even after he got inside his apartment.
‘Oh the friessss they landed in your bore-kit. Oh the friessss they landed on your floor. Oh the−’
‘You gone all fuckin’ religious all of a sudden, Caine?’
‘What’s it to you, Henderson?’ he said. ‘And what the hell are you doing bringing a gun into my apartment?’
Henderson spun the little pearl-handled revolver on his middle finger. ‘It’s my moms,’ he said. ‘I took it because it was there. And it ain’t your apartment, it’s ours.’
‘If it’s our apartment why don’t you go find yourself a job so you can pay some rent? And take fuck-face here with you.’ He kicked the sofa hard enough to wake the guy lying there. ‘It’s about time you two chipped-in and helped around here.’
‘Why should we pay rent if you don’t?’
‘Uncle Eddie pays for me, not you two, and if he ever finds out you’re here…’ he trailed off, kicked the sofa again. ‘Get up, Wade, ya lazy fuck. And I might not pay rent,’ he said to Henderson. ‘But I buy all the damn food around here.’
‘That’s because you eat all the damn food around here, ya fat fuck.’
Caine tossed his box of skinned chicken bones at Henderson and sat on the sofa. ‘I ain’t a fat fuck,’ he said. ‘It’s glandular, hereditary.’
Wade rubbed his mussed black hair. ‘What the hell’s got you all pissy, Caine?’
‘It’s that fuckin’ bitch next door, moppin’ and singin’ all the time about the Lord who comes down to the river.’
‘Ha,’ said Wade as he tossed a small plastic bag onto the coffee table. ‘Here, snort your troubles away with that and cut me a couple o’ lines, too.’
‘Y’know what, Wadie, my old pal, I take back what I said about you, you can stay as long as you like, free of charge’ He took a card from his wallet. ‘It’s fuck-face there who needs to get a job.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Henderson. ‘Me and mom’s little gun will stay here all day and guard your secret little greenhouse back there. And if anyone comes a knockin’ we’ll send ‘em a packin’.’
‘Well you can start right now and go shoot nosey whore if she ain’t done cleanin’, coz Wade and me’s gonna take a trip on the old snort express.’
Henderson licked his forefinger and slipped it through one of the lines Caine had laid out. He rubbed it over his gums before he went to look out the front door.
Caine rolled a dollar bill into a thin tube and drew-in two of the four white lines. He rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand then plucked at the end of it. ‘Wow, ‘sgotta kick, dude.’
Wade smiled and was about to snort the rest when Henderson stumbled back in. ‘Shut the fuck up, you two,’ he said.
‘Why, that bitch still out there?’
‘Yeah, but there’s some dude comin’ down the landing.’
‘So fuckin’ what,’ said Caine. ‘Don’t mean he’s comin’ here.’
‘Don’t count on it, Caine. I think it’s that cop, ya know, the one we seen talkin’ to that loud-mouthed bitch Sonia fuckin’ Marsh.’
Five loud knocks hit the apartment door and Caine blew away the last two lines. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Don’t let him in.’
‘Who’s there?’ Henderson shouted.
Caine thumped him in the arm. ‘You fuckin’ stupid fuck, now he knows someone’s here.’
‘Police, open the door, Mr Caine.’
Wade jumped up, took his plastic bag from off the table and ran to the toilet. ‘Fuck, shit’ he shouted. ‘It won’t flush.’
‘So what,’ Caine said. ‘I got a bedroom full of fuckin’ weed growing in there. Was you gonna flush that, too?’
‘Mr Caine, I need you to open the door right now, please.’
‘Shit,’ Wade said, looking for an exit. ‘What the fuck we do now?’
Caine jumped when Henderson fired the first shot, and the next five came so rapid he had no time to react.
‘What the fuck you doin’?’ he shouted.
‘My job, remember?’
A heartbeat later the door exploded inward and the black cop fired two shots into the room, one hit Henderson in his right shoulder, the other hit Wade in the back of his left thigh as he attempted to flee out the fire escape window. Caine watched his friends go down, and, forgetting what his gym teacher said about the sloth, he too made for the fire escape, but with an ass half as big as his sofa, he got stuck.
‘You ain’t going anywhere, sunshine.’ He heard, as a crackling noise sounded and an explosion of pain that started in his butt cheeks and soon shot through his whole body made him puke up his chicken supper.
He felt the cop grab his belt and drag him backward into the room, and again the pain shot through his body, this time starting in his balls.
‘I want a confession from you, Caine,’ the cop said, then zapped his nuts again. ‘I want you to tell me what you and your friends did to Sonia Marsh.’ Zap, zap-zap. ‘And don’t you leave anything out.’ Zap.
Caine puked two more times before he found the ability to speak. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Just don’t hit me with that thing again, please.’
After he’d belatedly Miranda’d Caine and his two friends, he called the uniform boys to come pick them up and returned to the station with a very-willing Clarissa Houseman to write his report and get a signed statement from her. Something she was happy to do, especially if it meant getting rid of Caine and his associates.
Once the report and statement were done, he thanked Mrs Houseman and dropped her off at her apartment block before reaching home at around two-thirty in the morning. He locked the car, unlocked his front door, slung his jacket over one of the chairs and poured himself a straight Scotch and swallowed it in one. His second Scotch went down just as fast but didn’t have quite the same bite as the first. He removed his shoulder holster and put his Glock in the gun safe. And, as he’d done every night for the past five years, he took a Colt forty-five from the safe and brought it back to the table and laid it before a silver-framed photograph.
Other than his wedding ring, the only item he kept after the accident was that one photograph of his wife and son, everything else, clothes, jewellery, toys, and furniture, he gave to Saint Joseph’s Villa, a facility in Richmond for homeless mothers and their children. The photograph was taken in the garden of their old house, it was Theo’s eighth birthday party. Theo was on his mom’s knee and wore the biggest smile Carter had ever seen. His mom was looking straight at the camera and was halfway through mouthing the words, “I love you.” when the flash went off, freezing her words for ever.
He saw no point in holding on to their four-bedroomed house in the burbs and sold it at half its market value for a quick sale. His current abode was a rented two-bedroom apartment in north Richmond. It wasn’t anything impressive and could do with a much-needed lick of paint, if he was honest. But the most important thing about the place was that it held no memories, other than the photograph he held and now stared at.
After a third Scotch, which he was sure had lost its taste altogether, he lifted the Colt and flicked open the magazine to see the dull brass jacket of the solitary bullet he put there after attending the double funeral five years ago. A bullet that so far hadn’t managed to find its way into the barrel. He closed the magazine and spun it with the heel of his left hand to hear the well-oiled mechanism whir its way to a slow click-click—click, stop. He poured his fourth drink, a larger one this time, he gulped half of it and raised the gun to his right temple, looked again at the photograph of his dead wife and son, and squeezed the trigger.
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