L.A. Requiem

  He cautions himself to be patient.

  The military manuals say that no plan of action ever survives first contact with the enemy. One must be adaptable. One must allow the plan to evolve.

  His plan has already morphed several times—Edward Deege being one such morph—and will morph again. Take Dersh. All the attention on Dersh annoyed him until he realized that Dersh could become part of the plan, just like Deege. It was an epiphany. One sweet moment when, through Dersh, the plan changed from death to lifelong imprisonment. Humiliation. Shame.

  Adaptability is everything.

  He himself is morphing. Everyone thinks him so quiet. Everyone thinks him so contained.

  He is what he needs to be.

  The killer relaxes, letting his thoughts drift, but they do not drift to Dersh or the plan or his vengeance; they drift back to that horrible day. He should know better. He always goes back to that day as if to torture himself. Better to play the constant chess game of his plan than wallow in hurt, but for so many years hurt was all he had. His hurt defines him.

  He feels the tears which he has never allowed anyone to see, and clenches shut his eyes. The wet creeps from beneath the sunglasses, leaving a trail of acid memories.

  He feels the beating. The belt snaps against him until his skin is numb. Fists pound his shoulders and back. He screams and begs and cries, but the people who love him most are the ones who hate him most. There's no place like home. Running. Walking. A trip on a bus. He escapes from a place where kindness and cruelty are one and the same, and love and loathing are indistinguishable. He is outside a diner when a man approaches. A kindly man who recognizes his pain. The man's hand touches his shoulder. Words of consolation and friendship. The man cares. Comfort. The rest follows so easily. Love. Dependence. Betrayal. Revenge. Regret.

  He remembers that day so vividly. He can see every image as if the movie of his life were broken frame by frame, each picture stark and clear, colors brilliant and sharp. The day the hated ones took the man from him. Took him, destroyed him, killed him. That day, after all these years and all these changes, burns so deeply that every cell is branded.

  He was fucked up for years until he gained control over himself. Mastered his feelings, and life. Mastered himself, contained himself, prepared himself so that he can do this:

  The tears stop and he opens his eyes. He wipes away the residue, and sits up.

  Control.

  He is in control.

  His loss must be repaid, and he has the means for that now. No longer weak, no longer helpless.

  He has a plan of vengeance against the one who hurt him the most, and a list of the conspirators.

  He is killing them one by one because payback is a motherfucker, and he is the baddest motherfucker to ever walk with the angels through the streets of this city.

  The military calls this “mission commitment.”

  His mission commitment is second to none.

  They will pay.

  He rolls off the bench and flexes his muscles in the mirror until the skin pulls tight, his veins bulge, and the bright red arrows glow hotly on his deltoids.

  Dersh.

  Pike's Dream

  He ran without a trail because it was harder that way. Dead branches from fallen trees raked at his legs like claws reaching from the earth. The brown leaves that covered the forest floor made for slippery footing as he dodged and twisted around the trees and vines and sinkholes that made him work to maintain his balance. He couldn't fall into a runner's rhythm because he was climbing over deadfalls and jumping over downed limbs as much as he was running, but that was why he did it this way. The Marine Corps Fitness Manual that he bought from a secondhand bookstore called this type of running “fartlek training,” which was something the Swedish Alpine troops thought up, and was the grueling basis behind the Corps's legendary obstacle course. The Fitness Manual said tough training was necessary to build tough men.

  Joe Pike, age fourteen.

  He loved the smell of the winter woods, and the peace that came from being by himself. He spent as much time as he could here, reading and thinking and following the exercise dicta of the Manual, which had become his bible. There was joy in exhaustion, and a sense of accomplishment in sweat. Joe had decided to join the Marines on his seventeenth birthday. He thought about it every day, and dreamed about it at night. He saw himself standing tall in his dress uniform, or sneaking through the Asian jungles in the war that was waging half a world away (though he was only fourteen, and that war would probably end soon). He enjoyed a thousand different fantasies of himself as a Marine, but, in truth, he mostly saw himself getting on a bus that would take him away from his father. He had his own war right here at home. The one in Vietnam couldn't be any worse.

  Joe was still tall for his age, and beginning to fill. He hoped that if he looked old enough when he was sixteen, he might be able to get his mother to fake the papers so that he could join the Corps even sooner. She might do that for him.

  If she lived long enough.

  Joe pushed himself harder as he neared the end of his run. His breath plumed in the cold air, but he was slick with sweat and didn't feel the cold even though all he wore were red gym shorts and high-top Keds and a sleeveless green tee shirt. He had followed the creek upstream for almost an hour, then turned around, and now he was almost back where he'd begun when he heard the laughter and stopped. The creek ran along the bottom of a slope beneath a gravel road, and, as Pike watched, two boys and a girl appeared at the top of the slope and made their way down a well-worn trail toward the creek.

  Pike slipped between the trees.

  They were older than Joe, the boys bigger, and Joe thought they might be seniors at the high school where he was a freshman. That would make them about seventeen.

  The larger boy was a tall kid with a coarse red face and zits. He was leading the way, pushing low-hanging branches aside and carrying a feed sack with something in it. The other boy brought up the rear. He had long hair like a hippie, and a wispy mustache that looked silly, but his shoulders and thighs were thick. A cigarette dangled from his lips. The girl was built like a pear, with a wide butt. Her features were all jammed together in the center of a Pillsbury doughboy face, her eyes two narrow slits that looked mean. She carried a one-gallon gas can like Joe used to fill his lawn mower, and she was laughing. “We don't have to walk all the way to Africa, Daryl. There ain't nobody around.”

  When she said his name, Joe recognized the boy with the sack. Daryl Haines was a high school dropout who worked at the Shell station. For a while, he had worked at the Pac-a-Sac convenience store, selling cigarettes and Slurpees, but he'd been caught filching money from the cash register and been fired. He was eighteen, at least, and might even be older. Once, Daryl had gassed up the Kingswood, but Mr. Pike discovered gas splattered on the paint. He'd gotten the red ass and raised nine kinds of hell. Now, when Mr. Pike rolled into the Shell, he pumped his own gas and Daryl kept the fuck away from his car. He'd pointed out Daryl to Joe once, and said, “That kid's a piece of shit.”

  Now, Joe heard Daryl say, “Just take it easy, baby. I know where I'm goin'.”

  The girl laughed again, and her little slit eyes looked worse than mean, they looked evil. “I ain't gonna wait all day for my fun, Daryl. Just so's you don't chicken out.”

  The kid in the rear made a chicken sound. “Bawk-bawk-bawk.” The cigarette bounced up and down when he made the sound.

  Daryl hit the brakes and glared. “You want me to hand you your ass, you dumb fuck?”

  The other kid showed both palms. “Hey, no, man. I didn't mean nothing.”

  “Dumb fuck.”

  Now the girl went, “Bawk-bawk-bawk,” looking at the cigarette boy.

  Daryl liked that, and they continued on the trail.

  Joe let them get ahead, then followed. He moved carefully, taking his time to avoid twigs and branches, staying off leaves where possible, and, where not, working his toes under the crispy top layer
to put his weight on the damp matter beneath. Pike spent so much time in the woods that he had learned its ways, easily tracking and stalking the whitetail deer that fed through the area. He found comfort in being so much a part of this place that he was invisible. Once, his father had chased him into the woods behind their house, but Joe had slipped away and his father couldn't find him. To be hidden was to be safe.

  They didn't go far.

  Daryl led them up the creek to a small clearing. It was a popular spot for drinking parties, the ground scarred with the remains of bonfires and beer cans. The girl said, “Well, all right! Take it out of the bag and let's see the show!”

  The kid with the cigarette said something Pike couldn't hear, and laughed. Yuk-yuk-yuk. Like Jughead.

  Daryl put the sack on the ground and took out a small black cat. He held it by the scruff of the neck and the back legs, saying, “You better not scratch me, you sonofabitch.”

  Pike slipped down into the creek bed, and eased along the soft earth there to work closer. The cat was grown, but small, so Pike thought it was probably a female. It made itself smaller against Daryl, its yellow eyes wide with fear. Frightened by the bag, and these people, but by the woods, too. Cats didn't like unknown places, where something might hurt them. The little cat made a squeaking mew that Joe found sad. It only had one ear, and Pike wondered how it had lost the other.

  The girl unscrewed the can, grinning as if she'd just won a prize. “Splash it real good with this, Daryl!”

  The cigarette boy said, “Shoulda got gasoline.”

  The girl snapped, “Turpentine is better! Don't you know anything?”

  She said it as if she'd done this a hundred times. Pike thought she probably had.

  For the first time in two hours, Joe Pike felt the cold. They were going to burn this animal. Set it on fire. Listen to it scream. Watch it twist and writhe until it died.

  Daryl said, “Get the can. C'mon, quick, before the bastard bites me.”

  Daryl held the cat to the ground as far from himself as he could, while the cigarette boy took the can and splashed turpentine on the cat. When the turpentine hit it, the cat hunched and tried to get away.

  The girl said, “I wanna light it.” Her eyes bright and ugly.

  Daryl said, “Well, Jesus, don't set me on fire.”

  The cigarette kid fumbled some safety matches out of his shirt pocket, dropping most of them. The girl snatched one up, and tried to strike it on the zipper of her jeans.

  Daryl said, “Hurry up, goddamnit. I can't hold this sonofabitch forever!”

  Joe Pike stared at the two larger boys and the ugly girl. His chest rose and fell as if he was still running.

  The first match broke, and the girl said, “Shit!”

  She picked up a second, scratched it on her zipper, and it burst into flame.

  The cigarette boy said, “All right!”

  Daryl said, “Hurry.”

  Joe pulled a deadfall limb from the mud. It was about three feet long and a couple of inches thick. The sucking sound it made coming out of the mud made them look, and then he stepped up out of the creek bed.

  The cigarette boy jumped back, almost tripping over his own feet. “Hey!”

  The three of them stared at Joe, and then the moment of their surprise passed.

  The match burned the girl's fingers, and she dropped it. “Shit, it's just some kid.”

  Daryl said, “Get out of here, fuckface, before I kick your ass.”

  The cat still squirmed. Joe smelled the turpentine.

  “Let it go.”

  The girl said, “Fuck you, retard. You watch how this thing's gonna jump.” She bent to pick up another match.

  Joe hoped they would just leave. Just set the cat free and go because they'd been caught. He stepped forward. “Can't let you burn that cat.”

  Daryl's eyes went to the stick, then Joe, and he smiled. “Looks like you already had your ass kicked, shitball. You want, I can bust your other eye. I can kick your fuckin' guts out for you.”

  The cigarette boy laughed.

  Purple-and-green bruises were fading from Joe's left eye, the remains of the beating his father had given him six days ago. He thought that these big boys could probably beat him, too, but then it occurred to him that he'd been beaten so often, another beating wouldn't matter much. That struck Joe as funny, and he wanted to laugh, thought he might just roar with laughter, but all that came out was a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  The little cat's eyes found Joe, and Joe thought that his eyes might look like that when his father was beating him.

  He stepped toward Daryl. “Only an asshole picks on a helpless little cat.”

  Daryl grinned wider, then glanced at the girl. “Light it up, goddamnit. Then I'm gonna kick this turd's ass.”

  The second match flared, and the girl hurried toward the cat.

  The world as Joe Pike saw it receded as if he was looking through the wrong end of a looking glass. He felt calm, and absolutely at peace as he lifted the stick and ran at Daryl as hard as he could. Daryl shouted, surprised that Joe was really going to take him on, and rose to meet the charge. The cat, suddenly free, streaked between the trees and was gone.

  The girl screamed, “It's getting away!” Like her little show was over and she'd missed the best part.

  Joe brought the stick down as hard as he could, but the stick was half rotten and broke across Daryl's forearms with a wet snap.

  Daryl threw a wild windmill of punches, catching Joe in the forehead and the chest, and then the other boy was behind Joe, punching as hard as he could. Joe felt their blows hitting him, but oddly felt no pain. It was as if he were somewhere deep within himself, a small boy alone in a dark wood, watching the action without being a part of it.

  The fat girl had gotten over her disappointment, and was now jumping up and down, pumping her fists like she was rooting for her football team to make the game-winning score. “Kill him! Kill the motherfucker!”

  Joe stood between the two older boys, punching wildly. The cigarette boy hit him hard behind the right ear, and when Joe turned to meet him, Daryl kicked him in the back of the leg, and Joe fell.

  Daryl and the cigarette boy leaned over Joe, throwing a flurry of blows that rained on Joe's face and head and back and arms, but still he felt nothing.

  They were big kids, but his father was bigger.

  They were strong boys, but his father was stronger.

  Joe rolled onto his knees, feeling their punches and kicks even as he lurched to his feet.

  Daryl Haines hit him hard in the face again and again and again. Joe tried to hit the bigger boys, but more of his punches fell short or missed.

  Then someone tripped him, and, again, he fell.

  Daryl Haines kicked him, but his father kicked harder.

  Joe climbed to his feet.

  The girl was still screaming, but when Joe was once more erect, Daryl Haines had a strange look on his face. The cigarette boy was breathing hard, winded from throwing so many punches, arms leaden at his sides. Daryl was breathing hard, too, looking at Joe as if he didn't believe what he was seeing. His hands were covered in red.

  The girl screamed, “Beat him, Daryl! Beat him real good!”

  Joe clawed at Daryl, trying to gouge his eyes, but missed and fell, landing on his side.

  Daryl stood over him, blood dripping from his hands. “Stay down, kid.”

  “Beat him to death, Daryl! Don't stop!”

  “Stay down.”

  Joe pushed himself to his knees. He tried to focus on Daryl, but Daryl was hazy and red, and Joe realized his eyes were filled with blood.

  “Are you fuckin'nuts? Stay down.”

  Joe lurched to his feet and swung as hard as he could.

  Daryl stepped outside of it, then jumped forward and hit Joe square on the end of the nose. Joe heard the crack and felt it, and knew that Daryl had broken his nose. He'd heard the sound before.

  Joe fell, and immediately tried to get
up again.

  Daryl grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him down. “You little shit! What's wrong with you?”

  The cigarette kid was holding his side like he had a stitch. “Let's get out of here, man. I don't wanna do this no more.”

  Joe said, “Gonna beat you.” His lips were split and it was hard to speak.

  “It's over!”

  Joe tried to hit Daryl from the ground, but the punch missed by a good foot.

  “It's over, goddamnit. You're beat!”

  Joe tried to hit Daryl again, but this time he missed by a yard.

  “Not over … until I win.”

  Daryl stepped back then, his face a raw mask of rage. “Okay, you dumb shit. I warned you.”

  Daryl reared back, kicked Joe as hard as he could, and Joe felt the world explode between his legs. Then there were stars and blackness.

  Joe heard them leaving, or thought he did. It seemed like hours before he could move, and when he finally worked his way to his knees, the woods were still. His groin ached, and he felt nauseous. He touched his face. His hand came away red. His tee shirt was splattered with drying blood. More blood streaked his arms.

  It was several minutes before he smelled the turpentine again, and then he saw the one-earred cat, staring at him from beneath the rotten branches of a fallen tree.

  Joe Pike said, “Hey, cat.”

  The cat vanished.

  “That's okay, girl. You're okay.”

  He thought she was probably scared.

  He wondered why he wasn't.

  After a while he went home.

  Three days later Daryl Haines scowled at the envelope and said, “Fuck this shit.”

  It was five minutes before 8 P.M. at the Shell station. Daryl was sitting on the hard chair he kept out front by the Coke machine, leaning back the way he did, snug in his down jacket, but pissed off about the letter. It was a notice from the goddamned Army to report for his induction physical.

  Daryl Haines, eighteen years old and without the luxury of a college deferment, was 1-A infantry material. He had to take the bus down to the city this Saturday just to have his ass poked and prodded by some faggot Army doctor so they could ship him over to Vietnam.