“At one o’clock, you would have been dead and your body dropped right here.”
“What? The dude seemed real cool, man. Didn’t seem like no crazy sex shit.”
“His clothes, what color?”
“Lemme think…black…yeah black shirt and pants.”
I thought about the man in the boat I’d seen earlier. “Give me the keys.”
“What?”
“Give them to me.”
“No problem, man. What’s this shit all about?”
“Start walking.”
“It’s after midnight. I’m a black man walkin’ in dumb-fuck nowhere.”
“It’s the only way you will live though the night. Move! Walk the opposite direction from the house. There’s a crossroad five miles west.”
He looked at me, shook his head, and started walking west.
As I approached my home, I knew why the owl had stopped its night call. It had seen something. Something coming up from the river. I melted in the dark shadows next to the trees and crept down to my dock.
I almost didn’t see it. Tied up behind the weeping willow tree was a boat. I could tell it was a small boat. In the moonlight, I knew it was the boat I’d seen earlier.
Santana was at my home.
EIGHTY-ONE
I stayed in the dark of the tree line next to my property, moving closer to my house. I knew that locks would not keep Santana out. Where was he? On the porch? Hiding somewhere in a room? Or was he behind the next oak tree?
I stepped out from cover and started for the porch, and I was blinded by all of my floodlights. My backyard was like a Friday night high school football field.
“You move and you die.” Santana’s voice was calm. It was more of a matter-of-fact than a death threat. “Throw the gun toward the river, and I won’t snap your dog’s neck. Remember that I have a gun pointed directly at your chest. Come on your porch, O’Brien. We’re going to sit down to hear you speak your last words on earth.”
I tossed the Glock and came up the steps entering the porch. Santana sat in a rocking chair, holding Max in his lap, her eyes wide. He pointed a pistol at me and kept the other hand clapped on the back of Max’s neck. She was nervous, her tiny body trembling. She looked at me with pleading eyes.
“No reason to hurt my dog.”
“Dogs were my competition for food. As a child, I used to have to compete with them for scraps from garbage cans. Let’s make this quick, O’Brien. I have other matters to attend to. Places to go, but I wanted to hear your last words, especially since you mentioned Josh Brennen. No one, at least no one alive, knows that Brennen is my father. How did you find out? Doesn’t matter. You’re about to die, so the secret remains with me. The bastard son, as you called me.”
“That’s what he called you.”
“How did you know him?”
“We had drinks together. He always spoke his mind around me. Funny how too much single malt can open a man up. Open up his most hidden secrets.” I slowly inched closer as I spoke. The spearhead I found was sitting on the table where I had left it. It was the best thing that I had to a weapon.
“That’s far enough,” he said, standing.
“Let Max go. Let her go outside.”
He lowered Max to the porch. “Let’s hear what the old man told you.”
Max looked up at me. “I’ll put the dog outside.”
“Don’t touch the rat! What did he tell you?”
“He told me you’d never cut it in his world. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if you had a dozen bastard brothers and sisters.” I inched closer to the table. “He was proud of his conquests with the dark-skinned women. He said no matter how you tried, Santana, you could never be better than Richard.”
“He’s the weak son! The gay son!”
“And you were the Guatemalan bastard child! Richard fit in. You, Brennen said, never would. Never could.”
I was less than five feet from the spearhead. “He told me that the only thing you two had in common was the color of the eyes. He said you may have had his eyes, but you’d never have his balls. Never be the man he was. He loathed you, Santana, no he pitied you. Said you’d never be more than a tomato picker. Said you didn’t have the intelligence to cut it in his world. He never even knew your mother’s name. Called her a brown whore.”
“You’re a liar.” He kicked Max in the side like he was kicking a football. I sprang for his gun — a second too late. The shot tore into my gut with the force of a baseball bat hitting me at full swing, knocking me to the floor. I rolled toward the table, grabbed the spearhead, and came up, hitting Santana hard in the center of his forehead. The sound was like an axe striking a piece of treated lumber. Blood squirted. I slashed out again with the spearhead, the thrust tearing his shirt, exposing his chest. Looking back at me were two large tattoos of cobras. Eyes glowing like coals.
He wears the mark of serpents on his body
Santana laughed. “You can’t kill me! Survival is what I do. A gut shot is a slow, painful way to die, O’Brien, but it’s most fitting for a detective like you. When you see my old man in hell, tell him his tomato picking bastard son said fuck off.”
My eyes couldn’t focus. Santana stood over me. “I might just sit here in this rocker and watch you die. That’s the part I enjoy the most. All that nasty bacteria flooding your bloodstream. You’re swimming in your own blood and shit, O’Brien. By the time they find you, your dog will have starved to death, or maybe the rat will eat your body. ”
My mind was spinning. The frogs and cicadas sounded like they were in my brain. They changed their singing into chanting, pulsating chants like an angry crowd at a boxing match. I felt a darkness closing in on my consciousness. Then I heard Max’s frantic barks, almost like howls. I crawled on my hands through the stickiness of my own blood. My mind was racing and a dimness enveloping me as I crept toward the kitchen. I shook the encroaching dark shadows from my mind and tried to sit up. Max’s barking was growing weaker or I was fading. I wasn’t sure which. I stood, held my hands to my wound, and limped into the kitchen. My long bow was in the corner with the single arrow next to it. I picked them up and staggered out the back porch door. Max went ahead of me. Barking and limping down to my dock.
The full moon was at a forty-five-degree angle to my back. The moon and floodlights illuminated my entire yard in a soft light that carried beyond the river. On the dock, I could see Santana untying a boat. The look on his face was of disbelief and then amusement. He said, “Are you a walking dead man?”
I notched the arrow shaft in the bowstring. I kept inching closer. I was about seventy feet behind Max as she approached the dock barking.
“I like your fighting style, O’Brien. You rise from the grave, break out an antique killing tool, and you want to do battle again, but it is your last fight.”
I was now close enough to see the red eyes of the snake tattoos on his chest.
He pointed his pistol at Max. “Your dog will be dead before you could ever shoot that thing. You’ll probably miss me by twenty feet. It’s dark. You can barely stand. You’re bleeding to death inside. Am I looking a little blurry to you right now, O’Brien? My, you don’t seem well. You’ve resorted to a primitive bow. You’re dying. Say goodbye to your noisy dog.”
My mind played back Joe Billie’s voice. Keep both eyes open, block everything else out but the spot — then let go.
Santana pointed the pistol. I pulled the bowstring back to the side of my cheek, elevated the tip of the ancient arrowhead, focused on his chest, and let go. The arrow hit dead center between the snake eyes. Santana fell backwards into the river. He tried to swim on his back against the current. His body jerked like electric jolts alternating through his limbs. Only the feathers on the shaft protruded out between the tattooed snakeheads. His arms flailed, slapping the water.